Skepticism

EVENTS

Predators among us

Feministe has a long, thorough, and scholarly overview of the most common kind of rape: acquaintance rape. It’s not the stereotypical violent assault that is going to affect most women, but the guy who gets them drunk and assaults them quietly, in situations with reasonable deniability. The article is loaded with triggers for you women who have experienced those situations, so I’ll just briefly summarize. The good news: it’s only a small percentage of men who are these kind of sexual predators. The bad news: they do it repeatedly, and usually get away with it. A few guys are making the rest of us look bad, and are inspiring a culture of fear in women.

One very useful part of the article is a summary of what we can do to isolate and stop the recidivist rapists.

(1) Men who inhabit cis- and het- identified social spaces need to listen to women. The women we know will tell us when the men they thought they could trust assaulted them; if and only if they know we won’t stonewall, deny, blame or judge. We need to listen without defending that guy. That guy is more likely than not a recidivist. He has probably done it before. He will probably do it again.

(2) The same men need to listen to other men. The men who rape will all but declare themselves. The guy who says he sees a woman too drunk to know where she is as an opportunity is not joking. Men who rape look for assurance that their social license to operate is in effect; they look for little confirmations that if he takes home the drunkest woman at the party and she says the next day that she said no, that she’ll be blamed and not believed. Choosing not to be part of a rape-supportive environment actually tells the rapist that his behavior has risks, and not everyone will take his side against an accuser.

(3) We need to change the culture of discourse about rape (and I mean all of us). Rapists know that the right combination of factors — alcohol and sex shame, mostly — will keep their victims quiet. Otherwise, they would be identified earlier and have a harder time finding victims. Women need social permission to talk frankly about sexual assault, because the more women can say what happened to them, the more difficult it is for the same man to rape six women without facing legal or even social consequences.

(4) Because the rapists have a fairly well-developed modus operandi, is is possible to spot it and interrupt it. We can look for the tactics and interrupt the routine. We can spot the rapist deliberately getting the woman drunk or angling to get the drunk woman alone in an unfamiliar place, and intervene. A guy offering a drunk woman a ride home may just be offering a ride, but if he is insistent when someone else offers a ride, this ought to raise a flag. If a guy is antagonistic towards women and places a lot of emphasis on sex as scoring or conquest, and he’s violating a woman’s boundaries and trying to end up with her drunk and alone, we don’t have to be sure what he’s doing to be concerned, and to start trying to give her exit ramps from his predatory slide.

I think #2 is going to be the toughest one. The men who engage in that sort of behavior tend to hang together and reinforce each other, and the men who will speak out and shut down predatory behavior in their pals at its onset will quickly find themselves excluded from the wolf pack. The problem, as we’ve seen in online behavior by the self-centered pigs, is that there’s no shortage of men (and women!) willing to form a support group for misogyny and rape culture.

Comments

@ Rev, it’s 108,000. Women make up 4.7% of the US prison population (same wikipedia link as before). That would make 5076 of those victims women, and 102,924 of them men.

Wow, you have another number.
This time, at least, it seems to be based on evidence. But now you still need to point to the evidence that in prison the numbers between male and female rape victims are 50-50, unlike any other place. Might, of course as well be that they are reversed from the out of prison world, with men having a 10 times higher probability of being sexually assaulted, but without any break down of the actual number you cannot just assume any of that.

Let me, just for a moment, just for the sake of argument, say that I agree 100% with your numbers, all seven million different versions of it. This is how that conversation would go.

Me: Wow, you’re right! MOre men get raped in prison than women do out of prison! There are more male than female victims!

You Thanks for listening. What can be done?meWell, I’d say must implement that steps PZ mentioned, especially #2 and 3!!, focusing on the socialization of men and the concept that “making someone your bitch”, male or female, is, to start with, a very damn noxious and rapey concept and no one, including “slutty” or “drunk” women/men or prisoners, should ever be treated like that.

This kind of education should go on over the entire culture and make EVERYONE see that NO rape is EVER okay, or okay to joke about, or shameful to talk about. We need to kill this cultural meme that says BOTH, AT THE SAME TIME, that it’s OK to rape a woman because X, Y, and Z, and it’s OK to rape a man in prison. IT’S NEVER OKAY, OKAY!

NOW, after reading the entire thread, it’s clear that what I’ve been saying here is basically what Pharyngula as a whole has been saying the whole time, quibbles on numbers aside.

Unless you were looking for another kind of response (in which case, please enlighten us), what the everloving fuck are you trying to say?

Lemme add this: the population of men raped, including in prison does not have to be more than the population of women raped for it to be an abominable, disgusting and horrifying cultural and societal problem that needs addressing STAT, so what exactly is your issue?

Okay, I have found that the prison population of the USA is about 2.2 million (you USAsians have a prison problem, btw) and roughly 2 million will be male (the federal prison population of women is about 100,000). If the link at the NCVC is accurate, then 22% of the male prisoners (understanding that the statistic is quite clear that it’s talking about male prisoners) is 440,000, which matches quite nicely with the number given at the link.

However, in the population at large, according to the other sources presented and including NCVC, 3% of men (or 2.78 million) and 6.2% of women (or 17.7 million) were victims of rape. other sources give total numbers of rape in the US at ~90,000 cases a year, but that explicitly is a problematic number. Other surveys and statistics agree that ~17% of women in the US are victims of rape.

Even if the male prison rape numbers are accurate, and given the fact that multiple sources largely agree that ~17% of women are victims of rape in the US each year, then it stands to reason that women and not men, represent the largest category of rape victims. But this must be obvious and necessary even aside form the statistics, considering that the US male prison population is only at most, ~2 million.

How it could possibly be claimed that they make up the largest category of rape victims is absolutely beyond me. There’s no way that it could be possible unless every single survey of rape victims and of rappers is entirely inaccurate, which is vanishingly unlikely, since these statistics are independent of each other and are highly convergent on the same results.

I can’t see a way around allowing consent to be void because you were inebriated while all other drunken decisions are regarded as if done sober. I may find it unwise but I cant say it’s different from any other activity.

As others have noted there is only one person making a driving decision, there are two establishing consent. One needs be sober to insure that your own social perceptions and decision making is at it’s best and needs to consider that another person who has been drinking has their social perceptions and decision making impaired. This is not as simple as making the same decision sober, (I would note here that sober people still mangle consent.) When the only thing one need do to bring things back to sober is wait until tomorrow, I fail to see why anyone wouldn’t.
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ara,

while a noble goal, the idea that all parties to a sex act are going to sit down and have a frank discussion about it first (or not sit down.. maybe they’re shouting it from the rooftops) seems to be unlikely. I agree that reliance on implicit consent isn’t a good place to be, though.

If you aren’t asking about another’s boundaries before you approach them you are dramatically increasing your chances of broaching them. Concerned people need a new standard, talk about boundaries before you play, and anyone who won’t gets the axe. It’s like safe sex, if someone doesn’t want to talk about wearing a condom, that should be a tip off that they aren’t concerned for the safety of their partner. Set the stage properly, then do the play.
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Carlie,

If you give her your number and tell her you won’t take advantage of her but would love to see her again, you might even be better off later once she sobers up and realizes you respected those boundaries.

Now that is good advice.
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Crowepps,
@175,
Yes, yes, yes. Changing the cover is an excellent way to put it. Our culture provides too many places to hide predatory behaviours, everyone can help with changing that.
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Azkyroth,

If the parties are equally intoxicated I’d say placing blame is pretty pointless.

So make the decision before you are drunk. No one needs to puzzle their way through while impaired, they have already decided to wait until they are sober. It is much easier to hold to a sober decision while drunk than it is to make a good decision in the moment.
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Sophia,
I don’t quite believe the specifics, but if she used the fact he was drunk to coerce him into having sex, yes it was most certainly rape.
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Fear Uncertainty Doubt,

I think that men taking advantage of women in compromised states is something that the human race will never be rid of.

But we can damn well do better.

This is an ugly aspect of life and I hate to say it but as long as women are going to be drunk around men, there will be men looking to exploit them. If you can’t accept that reality, you’ll always be behind the curve.

Hey, speaking of behind the curve, people here are arguing that having sex with drunk people is wrong. You are sounding like you somehow think that because weapons exist we shouldn’t have rules governing their use, while the people here are saying that precisely because there will always be predators we need better rules to make them easier to discern.

But I believe it naive to think that we can make a world in which a woman can get drunk and go home with a guy she just met with no risk to her at all.

How has said that we think that is a world we can attain?
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Kevin,
Good on you for paying attention to what you know and I am quite sure that most people who think that consent has not been given or has been revoked are correct in their assessment, if not their reaction. I note you have amended the wording, but I want to reinforce that what scares me is the people who might not have noticed anyways, or who were expecting her to tense up because that’s how sex has been portrayed to them. This shit is so messed up, best to not assume that people will know what was a no and instead focus on what constitutes a yes.
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Dawnbrynes,
I am glad you came through that, nothing about who you are makes what happened acceptable, everyone deserves to be consulted about their body and have their wishes respected.
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TJ,
Your post did have a point and I suspect some impact beyond myself as well. We can make a difference, that’s important.
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FUD,

But again, is this about figuring out how to prevent rape or about declaring blame?

There are several competing concerns, one is reducing rape, another is reducing the harm rape causes. Can you show that the things you suggested actually reduce the incidence of rape? Do women in societies where men and women don’t drink together, or even don’t associate, experience fewer sexual assualts? At the same time, do you deny that what you said has made people who have been raped upset? Lets keep this focused on what actually helps please.
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Ing,

Coke is better than Pepsi

You are responsible for the Pepsi on my monitor.
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Thomathy,

I’m gay (I say that a lot here, I think, but it can’t just be taken for granted) and I think it’s quite true that non-heteronormative people probably deal with sexual encounters very differently than heteronormative or heterosexual people.

This is something I have learned in other avenues as well, assumptions lead down poor paths when hooking up with new sexual partners. A couple of minutes touching on does and don’ts before the clothes come off can avert finding out in a very uncomfortable fashion that compatibility is not so good as personality had led those involved to assume. It’s also a natural way to gauge enthusiasm, someone who doesn’t even know what they want isn’t someone who seems interesting in engaging in sexy play time with, but someone who is looking for specific experiences has enthusiasm a plenty and will have no trouble both discussing what they want and when they are comfortable progressing to doing so.

I think you’re somewhat overestimating the magnitude of the fuck I don’t give about the opinions of an anonymous online community.

If you don’t, then what are you doing here, posting anonymously?

You got slammed because you made a stupid and irrelevant point. No one here advocates rape of any kind, whether the victim is male or female. Your stats are shaky and rely on comparing apples and oranges. You don’t even recognize the essential distinction here: yes, if I (a male) were in prison, I would have cause to fear the likelihood of rape, and that is not just. But I am not in prison, and my fear of rape is minimal. Unfortunately, if I were a woman, I’d have a substantial fear of rape even as a free citizen, and that is just as injust, and a wider and more legitimate concern of the community here.

You might also recognize the reason prison rape is common: it’s because of the high concentration of criminal men.

So, basically, you are seen as a smug interloper who shows up to minimize the valid concerns of women. It’s an excellent moral stance to oppose the rapes going on in prisons, and everyone here would agree with you…but that isn’t the subject here, so all you’ve managed to do is derail the discussion of the topic.

This was not the place to bring up your point, even if it were valid. We’ve hammered on that point before, when people try to bring up an ‘amusing’ point about some guy getting raped in prison — the crowd here will jump down their throat. In this thread, people are talking about rape of women and what we can do to change the rape culture in this country, and you offered nothing but a distraction.

This is probably the most civil response you could hope for. I could do worse. If you insist on your indignant complaining that you were unfairly picked on for being an oblivious and insensitive jerk, I will do worse.

Prison rape is awful, and likely does tend to be more common for men, and I don’t doubt that the numbers for rape with male victims are under reported, but so are the numbers for all rape. I don’t see much point in a dick measuring competition between rape victims. The better course of action is to eliminate the rape in the first place and get less victims on both sides, talking about who has it worse does nothing to help, talking about why it’s as accepted as it is and what we can do to change that does.

Just wanted to agree with PZ on #2. Frankly, college has been the time in my life when I ever hung around guys who would be out to get women drunk (and even suggested to me that I do the same) to get laid. I was too naive then for one (as far as speaking out against such people), but also I didn’t hang out with the guys who talked like that if I didn’t have to. Just rolled my eyes and walked away. So, definitely agree that people like that are only going to associate themselves with others who behave the same way. Likewise, those of us who aren’t like that avoid such groups.

T.J. Brown @310, thanks for sharing your story. I was raped regularly for years by a family member during my childhood. It’s extremely difficult to deal with and takes one helluva long time. I am so sorry you and your sister had this happen to you. I hope you are both coping well and doing okay now. If you ever want to talk (about anything), head on over to our lounge.

Even if you exclude everything but actual, completed rape, the low estimate is 140,000. – Custador

Read for comprehension, lackwit. Here is that number in context (copied from Sally Strange, OM@394):

In December 2000, the Prison Journal published a study based on a survey of inmates in seven men’s prison facilities in four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facility. A 1996 study of the Nebraska prison system produced similar findings, with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while incarcerated. Of these, over 50 percent had submitted to forced anal sex at least once. Extrapolating these findings to the national level gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped.

So that figure is for inmates in the system who have ever been raped while incarcerated, not the number of either rapes or victims per year. If you’re going to play Oppression Olympics, it’s a good idea to make sure you know what you’re talking about.

BTW your whine about the rape of men being ignored won’t wash here; it gets discussed plenty, and this is one site where expressing the wish that some particularly unpleasant criminal will be raped in jail will get you a full-scale chewing-out, because no-one deserves to be raped. But this thread is specifically about how rape culture is bound up with sexism and misogyny, and how this combination constrains and oppresses women. This is a perfectly valid topic even if, contrary to common belief, there are actually more rapes with men as victims than women. For the great majority of men outside prison, the risk of being raped simply is not and does not need to be a factor in deciding where to go, how much to drink, and who to associate with. You know that as well as I do.

Thanks to all the non-rape-apologists (and especially those who’ve shared their stories) who contributed to this powerful thread – one thing I’ve resolved as a result is to find an occasion to talk with my teenage son about the issues it raises and the four points PZ quotes. I’m as certain as one can be he would never rape; but that’s clearly not enough, and as I know from two recent experiences, you need to have thought about what to do when an anti-rape or anti-assault intervention (on any scale) is or may be needed.

The article proposes four measures focused on the threat of recidivist rapists. PZ quoted them. Summarizing, the are:

(1) Men who inhabit cis- and het- identified social spaces need to listen to women.

(2) The same men need to listen to other men.

(3) We need to change the culture of discourse about rape (and I mean all of us).

(4) Because the rapists have a fairly well-developed modus operandi, is is possible to spot it and interrupt it.

I see very little substantive discussion here about these proposals.

I have proposed two cultural interventions that may help reduce risk:

1) addressing the culture of excessive alcohol consumption, particularly among young adults, and the cultural link between pairing and bars (and drinking in general).

2) Ensuring that our educational focus is proportional to actual risk probabilities. This means both ensuring that women are better educated abou the relative risks of acquaintance vs stranger rape, and exploiting the opportunities for discussion and education within families and among acquaintances to educate about rape and rape prevention.

I am sure others here can come up with constructive suggestions for additional practical measures to help change what we all agree is undesirable, no matter which stats we like to use.

We all agree that less rape – of anyone – is a good thing, and less fear is a good thing, and safer and more comfortable social interactions among and between all people is a good thing.

Why not learn what we can from the article PZ posted, focus on productive discourse emphasizing shared goals, and figure out ways we can make a difference?

I’m not okay with you saying that men cannot control their urges and that women should therefore expect to be hurt if they put themselves in compromising positions.

Why do you hate men so much? And please note, this is a radical feminist asking you that, so please do consider it a serious question.

Here’s a newsflash for you: Women know already that this is the prevailing cultural meme re: men and sexuality. We may not agree with its veracity (I DON’T!), but we are aware that that is the case.

We have this drilled into us from the first day we attend pre-school. What do do (hold your keys in your fist, sticking out, to use as a weapon when you’re walking alone, even in daylight, etc etc etc ad infintum), what not to do (wear your hair in a pony tail, wear your hair loose, etc etc etc ad infinitum). Also: we do this, most of us, most of the time. ALSO: IT DOESN’T FUCKING WORK. I still got raped, as did many, many other women.

It’s called Rape Culture for a reason – look it up some time.

What we women are saying is:

We are tired of being treated unfairly

You can walk alone at night, why can’t I? You can get drunk with your friends and not worry that you’ll likely end up raped and then get blamed and shamed for “letting” it happen,, why, just because I was issued with a vagina and boobs instead of a penis, can I not do the same?

Men are NOT slavering beasts who can’t be expected to be held to acceptable levels of human conduct. They’re just growing up in a culture that TELLS them that that is the case and may start to believe it, and people like you, reinforcing that view, are not helping.

I expect more (with bracketed paraphrasing to fit into the theme of the discussion by me, but still reflecting accurately the writer’s intent, I hope).

You can’t expect (something that’s prevalent in our culture to change and insist that it should be changed). It will upset people.

The fuck I can’t. I expect more.

I’m not ironically detached, I’m not apathetic, I’m not resigned, and I’m not contemptuous of bleeding hearts. I am a greedy bitch with voracious expectations, and I dream long and lustfully of a better world that is both my muse and objective. I want it like the cracked earth of the desert wants rain, and I will neither apologize for nor amend my desire because of its remove from the here and now; its distance encourages my reach.

In reply I got Ogvorbis rather emotively telling me that this thread is only about female rape and if I wanted to talk about that other rape, well, I’d better take it elsewhere (nb: to me, rape is rape. The gender of the victim doesn’t matter, and I think it’s needlessly divisive to treat men who rape men separately from men who rape women – They’re all rapists).

And I stand by my description of this thread about male on female rape and how we can change the rape culture. And yes, I got emotional (way too emotional — I hadn’t thought about that asshole and what he did to me in quite a while) and used my personal experience to show you that yes, we are aware that males rape males and we find it deplorable. I also reiterate that the only reason to bring up male on male rape, yet again in this thread, is to derail all this talk about women and make the whole fucking thing about men. Which you did. Congratulations.

Read what PZ wrote a few comments up and think about your motives for being here. It ain’t all about men all the time.

To expand on what I said @174, I really think that if suggestion #3 could be completely and truly implemented, then a large amount of the problem would be fixed, right there.

Today, if a woman says she is raped, she is asked what she was wearing, what she did to invite it, where she was, and if the rapist is not vastly her social inferior, his word is held against hers. In many places, just by admitting that she had (non-consensual) sex, she is outing herself as a slut.

Most rape is about power. The rapist wants to be more powerful than the victim. To enable the victim to receive justice is to take that power away.

That does not make sense, even plain logical sense. It doesn’t address the issue of how to reconcile the claim that more men are raped than women with the competing claim (in your source) that 10 percent of rape victims are men.

After going through Custador sources, I finally understood what was going on with the seemingly contradictory claims. If his sources are to be believed, it is possible that more men than women end up being raped every year. Buuuuuuuuuut, since most male victims of rape are found among prison inmates (2% of the male US population) even if 420.000 men are indeed raped in prison each years, this does not mean that 420.000 men are being raped for the first time each years: what is more likely happening is that a tiny chunk of the US male population is regularly victimized while the rest of the male population is mostly safe, which explains why men make up a minority of rape victims despite the fact that rape with male victims are so frequent.
*
Of course, this data does not fit into the “what about the pooooooooooor oppressed mens” column, and should be placed into the “US penal system is fucked up” column, but, no matter how counter-intuitive it appears, the two assertions are not mutually exclusive, since one relates to frequency (male on male rape on a yearly basis) while the other relates to prevalence (number of women being raped during their lifetime).

The women’s rights movement has seen an 80 percent reduction in rape since the early ’70s when it was put on the agenda as a feminist issue.

This is not an argument that we should not worry about rape because it has declined*. On the contrary, it is to say that we should look to the specific cultural changes, both deliberate and incidental, that have contributed to the dramatic reduction in the prevalence of rape over the past 30 years, and explore whether more of the same is sufficient to produce further reductions, or whether there are new/different things we need to be doing.

*(It is, however, a useful thing to keep in mind, particularly when citing statistics – when the study cited was performed matters a great deal in this case). All forms of violent crime have been on a precipitous crime over the past 30 years. This includes violent crime in urban areas.

Yet our perception is the opposite, and we live in greater fear today – fed in large part by media hype & reliance on anecdote and gut feelings over rational examination (& widespread ignorance about statistics).

No question that any rape is too many, and that tolerance of rape culture is unacceptable. But it is as distressing to hear so many young women talk about seeing every man as “Schroedinger’s Rapist” as it is to hear some white people talk about living in fear of every person of color they pass in the street.

While we continue to focus our moral outrage, and our social activism, on making a better world, let’s not let the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.)

A good step toward #1 and #3 would be for men to simply listen to women without cutting them off or trying to redirect conversations.

I don’t think that every man does this…but I have noticed that of the people I know, a majority of men cut off women in mid-sentence a lot more than they cut off other men. Oddly, some women seem to be able to talk over each other but still carry on a coherent conversation. I don’t understand how that works, but I’ve seen it in action a few times and I’m impressed.

Listening is the key skill. Make it a conscious habit to listen to women, and then it becomes an unconscious habit…and one does it naturally.

Having read through all of Custador’s posts and responses, the one thing that comes through most clearly to me is that Custador has a deep, emotional response to males being raped.

For what it’s worth, Custador, all the regular people here have the same response. You don’t help yourself by exaggerating or fudging stats, because fucked up stats will get one hell of a response here.

As someone who survived a bad encounter with a serial rapist and murderer and survived over 8 years of regular childhood rape by a family member, I do not take rape or sexual assault of any kind lightly, no matter who it happens to. There have been a great many threads on Pharyngula about these issues, and I have always been willing to offer up my story to help other survivors talk about their experiences, including men who have come forward with the stories of their rapes.

No one here ignores the fact that men are raped too. However, no matter how much you rail and fudge stats, the majority of rape victims are women. What we are addressing in this thread is the rape culture we all find ourselves in right now. Men raping men isn’t going to stop until we start changing social attitudes about rape.

For those men who doubt this, lemme suggest a little exercise. Get yourself into a group of three or more people of mixed gender and watch how conversation proceeds. Take note of how frequently people talk, but more importantly of how often they stop and for what reason. It took me a bit of practice to learn the difference between speaking when there was a pause for me to fit into and speaking when I could make a pause happen, and I found some observation went a long way in helping identify the difference.

But it is as distressing to hear so many young women talk about seeing every man as “Schroedinger’s Rapist” as it is to hear some white people talk about living in fear of every person of color they pass in the street.

Gee, maybe that’s because if anything does happen to us, we get blamed for it?

/sarcasm

1 in 4 or 1 in 6, depending on which sites you read – that’s a woman’s chance of being sexually assaulted and/or raped during her lifetime.

I’m already part of that statistic. I know why the fear exists…because we don’t know which men will turn out to be the assholes who rape us.

I’m already part of that statistic. I know why the fear exists…because we don’t know which men will turn out to be the assholes who rape us.

Ayup. Me too. As Dawn said upthread, rape changes you, permanently. You’re no longer the same person. Also, I’ll re-state what Classical Cipher said upthread, that even for those women who have not been raped or assaulted, you learn a massive list of rules from the time you are very young and have to carry them throughout life in the hope that you won’t end up as one of the statistics.

Unfortunately, those who might rape a/o assault don’t wander about with a neon tattoo on their forehead.

Custador: Think about it this way. The stats from the report as quoted at length by KG gives about a rate of 1 in 5 men raped during their course of time in prison. That’s shocking and horrible and nasty. And it falls just about in the middle for estimates of women who have been or will be raped in their lifetime (i.e. between 1 in 6 and 1 in 4). In other words, women live under the same threat of rape in normal society as men do surrounded by violent criminals in prison.

Both of these situations are caused by the same thing: Men being socialised to believe that an acceptable way to have power over others is to dehumanise them and treat them as receptacles for their dicks, either for your own pleasure or as a means of punishment.

FUD: Women and girls are already being educated. Have been for thousands of years. It’s time for us to educate the boys and the men.

RandomReason: Your first proposal would only result in women being culturally closeted from drinking socially. And they would still get raped. Your second already occurs. We talk about a lot about stranger rape when situations like the Elevator Incident occur, but believe me when I tell you that we’re also taught precautions about acquaintance rape (don’t leave your drink unattended, always tell your friends where you are, meet up with new dates in public places, don’t go anywhere private with a guy until you know each other, always bring money with you in case you need to get a cab or use a pay phone, etc.*). It’s time for us to educate the boys and the men.

—
* And need I point out yet again that these rules are brought up again when a rape actually occurs? “Oh, you went somewhere private with a guy alone? That must mean you were asking for it.”

No question that any rape is too many, and that tolerance of rape culture is unacceptable. But it is as distressing to hear so many young women talk about seeing every man as “Schroedinger’s Rapist” as it is to hear some white people talk about living in fear of every person of color they pass in the street.

Get a new analogy. That one is stupid. We’ve explained why roughly five million times and I am sick of it.

While we continue to focus our moral outrage, and our social activism, on making a better world, let’s not let the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.)

Listen, asshole:
I was raped in my home, in my bed, by someone I had known for three years, had loved and trusted above all others for two years. My best friend, a person with whom I had shared every vulnerability, every pain, every joy, for two years – he woke me up raping me. And that wasn’t all he did – over the course of several months, he took everything I’d ever shared with him and he used it to break me down, with deliberate cruelty. He told me that I was worthless, a whore, an object (like a vending machine or a computer), he isolated me from my friends and made me unable to feel safe in my home, he eventually broke down my sense of self to the point where I was unable to remember what it was like to have one. That was two years ago.

Now, I’m at school again. I’m trying my best to make friends, trying my best to not recoil and shut people out when they seem to want to become closer with me, but I’m not able to trust people, because my best friend, whom for two years I would have called the most decent and loving person I’ve ever met, wasn’t decent enough to refrain from raping me and abusing me. I still have flashbacks and nightmares, I still spend a lot of time crying, I still struggle to hold together a consistent identity. I also know – don’t think, know – that because rapists don’t have warning labels, I need to be conscious of the men around me, need to be constantly wary, because one of them could be the third to rape me. Nevertheless, I’m here, I’m working my ass off to achieve my life goals, throwing everything I have into being a “real person” again, and I’m doing a damn good job of it.

Tell me again how I’m letting him win. Tell me how I ought not to let him stop me from enjoying my life, and our “common humanity.” Share with us your fucking wisdom.

Ayup. Me too. As Dawn said upthread, rape changes you, permanently. You’re no longer the same person. Also, I’ll re-state what Classical Cipher said upthread, that even for those women who have not been raped or assaulted, you learn a massive list of rules from the time you are very young and have to carry them throughout life in the hope that you won’t end up as one of the statistics.

You have an amazing amount of strength and courage, and I appreciate that you’re so open about your experiences. Hearing/seeing people be open about abuse and rape has encouraged me to add my voice to those demanding that we end this bullshit.

Unfortunately, those who might rape a/o assault don’t wander about with a neon tattoo on their forehead.

Sex education that actually covers how to have sex would be quite helpful here.

A part where they’ll point out that unless the woman is as sexually aroused as the man, sticking anything with a “girth” on it up there can be painful. Hit the very opposite of attraction, what, fear, disgust etc. and it’s quite like gettting kicked in the nuts. Again and again. Until the one doing the kicking is satiated.
Sorry regular, non-sinister blokes, it really is that easy to become a rapist when you’re not giving a rat’s arse about your lover.

And like drinking’s an excuse. Mean, I’ve done some stupid and insensitive shit in my time but not repeatedly to one person who’s clearly suffering because of it.

Had to delurk because I just find it incredibly strange how very little effort seems to go into even trying to explain simple, visceral human shit to each other in hopes of reaching an understanding and doing better next time.

What you’re missing is not that women think that rape is more common than it used to be. I’d argue that if the numbers have fallen, it isn’t by much.

Used to be, if the rapist wasn’t a stranger, if it wasn’t violent, if the victim wasn’t a virgin, if she wasn’t at least middle-class, etc etc etc then it wasn’t rape, legally or socially.

The definitions have changed. People’s perceptions have changed. Women have always had the ‘Schrodinger’s rapist’ view, but now they have the vocabulary and the space to say that they have it.

Don’t forget that a lot of it had to be criminalized and counted as rape first before it could go down.
Marital rape wasn’t illegal up until the 70’s in most countries and took until the 1990’s in some countries. And the attitudes have changed, I think

While we continue to focus our moral outrage, and our social activism, on making a better world, let’s not let the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.)

I was raped by a cubscout leader. On scout sanctioned camping trips. With other cub scouts (including his son). And more than one adult (his wife was also a cub scout leader). Referring to this as a problem with ‘terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals’ winning ignores the fact that they do not have a tattoo on the forehead, they do not look like the Beetle Boys from the Scrooge McDuck comics, they do not look like Osama bin Laden. Schroedinger’s rapist is still a very valid way to look at the world.

It’s time for us to educate the boys and the men.

I was very firm with Boy (who is now 21, but referring to him as Man just doesn’t work) that, when it comes to sex, no means no, maybe means no, and impaired means no.

Saying I’m so damn sorry this happened to you is not enough. It’s not enough. No one should ever experience being raped. With tears in my eyes, I’ll still say I’m sorry.

As for all those “terrorists” the idiot RR is going on about, well, they are your neighbours, your co-workers, your friends, your family. They are people you chat with online. They are every day people, doing every day things.

No one protected me from the family member who started raping me when I was three years old. He was a ‘pillar of the community’, a good man, a family man, a hard working man, a church goer, etcetera.

I’ll just bet your cub scout leader was the same.

These are just some of the reasons that Schrodinger’s Rapist is a reality, whether people like it or not.

Zerple,
I wasn’t there, I don’t know what they said, but please consider that whatever your new source is, ( I gather you are reading further than just here, yes?) most of those who were present in said lecture were they exposed would still find it unpleasant and either tune it out or seek to find fault. You might find that could you re-attend your experience would be different with what you are learning.

RandomReason: I personally have not been raped, but my sister was raped and abused by her (thankfully former) boyfriend, and I can assure you that he seemed to be the kindest person. The sad fact is that Schrodinger’s Rapist is real. We need to demolish rape culture to see an improvement. It is that simple.

I’m so sorry for everything you’ve gone through. You are phenomenal for moving forward and remaking your life into what you want it to be.

Thanks. The people here – especially the survivors here who have been open about their experiences, and who have shown that it’s possible to carry on (too many to name) – have helped me and inspired me to be stronger than I ever thought I could be. I owe a lot to this community. It just pisses me off endlessly for us to be lectured loftily by some dumbass (RandomReason) about how we should live our lives when said dumbass evidences no fucking understanding of what it takes for some of us just to get through a day.

It just pisses me off endlessly for us to be lectured loftily by some dumbass (RandomReason) about how we should live our lives when said dumbass evidences no fucking understanding of what it takes for some of us just to get through a day.

Amen, Sister. We have to sing it loud, sing it furiously, because that’s what it’s going to take.

Ogvorbis – I’m so sorry. I haven’t noticed you mention it before; if this thread was what brought it out, I’m sorry it was even here to bring that up in your mind and decide to use yourself as an example (and the same goes to everyone else who’s shared here and in other threads).

…because people shouldn’t have to use themselves as examples. It’s ok if they do, and I’m glad that they are willing to share to drive the point home, but they shouldn’t have to. The idea that we should all act decently to each other, and the acknowledgment that sometimes other people are pieces of shit and we have to have a culture that teaches people not to act like shit, shouldn’t have to have personal anecdotes attached because it’s not their job to be object lessons to other people, is the point I’m trying to make. And damn those people like Custador and RandomReason who stubbornly refuse to listen to rational discussion without being slapped in the face with personal stories (and damn them to hell when they still refuse to listen after that).

I have a question for those who insist that it is unfair to ever talk about females being raped without also talking about men being raped:

How many times have you been told that, in order to protect yourself from rape, you must

Not travel alone.
Not go outside after dark.
Carry a weapon.
Not work certain places.
Not wear certain clothes.
Wear clothing that makes rape more difficult.
Let someone know whenever you go someplace.
Not drink.
Have short hair so rapists can’t grab it.
Keep your windows closed and locked.
Not live on the ground floor.
Never open your door until you know who is outside it.
Plant thorny bushes outside your windows.
Never wear headphones/earbuds.
Vary the route you take when going somewhere.

These are all restrictions that I personally have encountered and can think of off the top of my head.

It just pisses me off endlessly for us to be lectured loftily by some dumbass (RandomReason) about how we should live our lives when said dumbass evidences no fucking understanding of what it takes for some of us just to get through a day.

Same here. Fuck that noise.

After surviving one rape, several sexual assaults, physical abuse, three stalkers and one mugging, RandomReason has the nerve to say I shouldn’t live in fear?

Right. So obviously all that shit never happened to me because that’s the only way anyone can justify telling me to stop fearing what men can do to me. Experience is a fantastic teacher.

A host or hostess is within their rights to evict someone who is acting like a predator, whether it’s urging a woman to match them drink for drink and getting them more or trying to get them alone when they don’t want to go or suddenly offering to escort someone they barely know. “Fred, can you find Dick his coat? He’s just leaving.”

1) When I said it was “distressing”, I meant it literally. It distresses me that women live in fear. I was not dismissing the reality of rape. I was noting that research has shown that humans have a poor ability to estimate magnitude of probability of the events they fear occurring. That does NOT refer to someone traumatized by a rape or a mugging or a terrorist attack.

It DOES suggest that a society in which everyone who has not been victimized lives in fear, despite the fact that the phenomenon they fear are much rarer than they used to, is not an optimal society.

2) The article, PZ’s comments, and mine, addressed possible ways to reduce rape. Nothing I wrote was intended, nor did it, dismiss, diminish or seek to delegitimize the pain of rape victims. Your rage, while completely understandable, is misdirected. I have not made any of the straw man arguments you are flinging at me.

3) I made what was intended to be a constructive series of posts designed to:
a) get us off the usual habit of obsessing about the idiots who come here to fuck people up, and focus on what we all can do to make the horror you experienced less likely for others.

Now, responding to the few substantive comments:

Ibis3,
Changing the popular culture that promotes alcoholic *excess* among young people is not “women being culturally closeted from drinking socially.” Please read my proposal again, as it makes exactly the opposite argument.

“And like drinking’s an excuse. ”

Quite the contrary. It does have an effect, leading, from a practical matter, to increased risk of women being raped by men drunk out of their minds. You are imputing a moral argument to what is a practical argument.

I am concerned with actually reducing rapes. The American culture which glorifies drunkenness contributes to circumstances in which men’s inhibitions are reduces, and women’s vigilance is impaired. If you disagree, please disagree with what I said, rather than inventing statements to attack.

I’d argue that if the numbers have fallen, it isn’t by much.

Then argue with Steven Pinker and his sources. As I said, that doesn’t make current rapes any less horrific or diminish the need to reduce their frequency far more.

Both the article PZ cites about and the stats Pinker cites provide useful data, adding to what is already known, to ensure that our efforts to reduce rape are effective. We can and should learn from why there was an 80% decline in 30 years.

I’m sure we’d both like to see another 80% decline in the next decade. How should we achieve that? As emotionally satisfying as it is to scream at a handful of MRAs on Pharyngula, that is not going to achieve real change.

This is an example of how empiricism can and should be applied rigorously to social issues.

If we don’t start with the right data, and don’t conduct rigorous analysis based on that data, we can draw the wrong conclusions and pursue the wrong policies – policies that may be emotionally or ideologically satisfying, but may be ineffective.

In particular, we should analyze data about such a dramatic reduction in rapes and understand how and why it occurred, so that we can learn from and apply best practices. And, we should understand how and when rapes are most likely to occur. When I say we, many of you hear “you women”. That is NOT what I am saying, nor what I have said.

Ibis3

“It’s time for us to educate the boys and the men.”

Please reread my second point. That is *exactly* what I am proposing.

Many here are so caught up in their (utterly understandable) rage at rape apologists, that you are blindly attacking folks who support you and wish to help create a society where you have less to fear, and where rapes are much rarer than they already are.

Comparing me to Custador is ridiculous. Please cite a single statement I have made remotely in support of any of his arguments. You are not actually reading what I wrote.

The Ys,

After surviving one rape, several sexual assaults, physical abuse, three stalkers and one mugging, RandomReason has the nerve to say I shouldn’t live in fear?

Nope. Not even close. I have neither diminished the horrific reality of your experience or its effect on your day to day life, nor have I said that you should not live in fear. Please reread what I wrote as written.

I assume we would both like to create a world where fewer women have to go through what you went through – and, a world in which women who have not experienced rape would not have to live in constant fear of it.

PZ’s post talked about ways to reduce rape. I would like to talk about how to do that. How does that equate to denying rape or apologizing for it?

Please read and respond to the commenter’s comment, not to some other comment by some other commenter that enraged you. I share your disgust with their attitudes.

I have neither diminished the horrific reality of your experience or its effect on your day to day life, nor have I said that you should not live in fear. Please reread what I wrote as written.

We did, numskull:

While we continue to focus our moral outrage, and our social activism, on making a better world, let’s not let the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.

What, exactly, do you mean by this, if not “let’s not live in fear of rape?”

No one has the luxury of doing so, not even you, although you can come close. This insistence that you have been clear and already communicated your point well is not empirically supported by people’s responses. You could do a lot by rather than insisting that you did not say what people have inferred instead saying, ‘I am sorry that I made you feel that way, here is what I had hoped to get across.’ Or something to that effect. Communication is not as perfect as you are pretending, and the easiest way to quell misunderstandings is to acknowledge them and learn how best to communicate with the people you are engaging.

RandomReason: I personally have not been raped, but my sister was raped and abused by her (thankfully former) boyfriend, and I can assure you that he seemed to be the kindest person. The sad fact is that Schrodinger’s Rapist is real. We need to demolish rape culture to see an improvement. It is that simple.

1) Yes, we do need to demolish rape culture. How do you propose doing that? If it’s “so simple”, why hasn’t it happened yet?

2) Rape culture does not exist in a vacuum. It makes sense to look at social factors that contribute to it. I have proposed that American culture which glorifies excessive drinking and alcohol abuse as both a right of passage and a social lubricant is a contributory factor. Do you disagree? On what basis?

3) “rape culture” is a fuzzy term that is complex and defined subjectively. If we seek to address a social problem, does it not make sense to look at the data, the trends and the results of past efforts in order to devise an effective strategy? Does it not also make sense to look at other successful social behavior modification campaigns, such as the campaign to transform smoking from a glorified right of passage to a repugnant, inconsiderate, self-destructive practice?

I don’t understand the point about your sister having been raped. If the stats folks post here are true, wouldn’t you assume that most if not all of us have family members or friends who have been raped? I do. But that does not give me any special insight into how to stop it.

What does any of that have to do with reviewing the data, figuring out why the efforts of feminists successfully led to an 80% reduction in rapes starting in the 80’s, and seeing what we can do to continue and to improve that trend?

What practical actions are you proposing to demolish rape culture, and what is the basis for your assuming they will work?

It DOES suggest that a society in which everyone who has not been victimized lives in fear, despite the fact that the phenomenon they fear are much rarer than they used to, is not an optimal society.

Ya don’t say. One thing you need to get clear is that rape is not rare. Not even remotely. People are being raped as we type. There is a reason for the fear.

Your rage, while completely understandable, is misdirected.

No it isn’t. You are part of the problem. You don’t listen, for one. It would be extremely helpful if you spent some time truly listening instead of desperately clinging to some of your more idiotic notions.

I have not made any of the straw man arguments you are flinging at me.

Yes, you have. Many people have patiently taken you through them, step by step. Here’s where listening is helpful.

I made what was intended to be a constructive series of posts designed to:

Intent is not magic. Neither are most of your ideas a/o “designs”.

a) get us off the usual habit of obsessing about the idiots who come here to fuck people up, and focus on what we all can do to make the horror you experienced less likely for others.

“Us”? No, you aren’t us, you’re one of the idiots who come here to fuck people up. At least, that’s what you’ve been so far. Also, Pharyngula (us) doesn’t work that way. We believe in glossy coats and sniny fangs. As for the horror many of us have experienced, you can make it less likely to happen by doing the things outlined by PZ in his post. By listening. By being unafraid to step up and speak out to peers, men in particular. By being outspoken about rape culture, entrenched sexism and privilege. Yes, privilege, that little road bump in your not-helpful help.

Then argue with Steven Pinker and his sources.

You’re the Pinker fanboi and I suggest losing that crap. Pinker is not the end all be all, and arguments from authority don’t fly here.

Many here are so caught up in their (utterly understandable) rage at rape apologists, that you are blindly attacking folks who support you and wish to help create a society where you have less to fear, and where rapes are much rarer than they already are.

Oh fuck off already, Cupcake. My rape happened over 30 years ago. The fact that you don’t understand what happens to someone when they are raped, regardless of the type or circumstance paints you in a bad light. Get over your fucking self, you self-absorbed asspimple. Oh, and once again: rape is not rare.

Your narcissistic attitude, fallacies and insistence on some sort of detached empiricism along with your ineffective and stupid ‘fixes’ are the things being attacked.

You’re free to shut the fuck up and do something actually helpful, like listen, any time. Interesting you can’t manage it though. You aren’t too hot on the thinking front, either.

When the responses bear no reasonable relation to the writing, when they erect straw men that aren’t even remotely implied in the writing, and when they equate one commenter to another even though they haven’t made a single common, or even related, comment, then placing the onus on the writer is not valid – particularly in an atmosphere where far more screaming than considered discussion is occurring.

If one is unclear about another’s communication, one can ask for clarification. Making assumptions that are not even remotely justified by any reasonable reading of a text is not helpful to anyone. It certainly does not direct discussion towards constructive action.

I post occasionally, but not under this nym. I don’t talk about this much if ever, and I’m not ready to associate this with my regular nym.

See, I wasn’t raped. I never said no. I was 18 years old and profoundly depressed. I was lonely, and he offered to keep me company. I knew he was interested and didn’t explicitly turn him down when he asked before he came over. By the time it happened we were in a car far from the dorm in the middle of the night. What was I going to do? I’m sure he thinks he did nothing wrong.

This is why we teach enthusiastic consent. This is why no means no isn’t enough. Because if he’d been looking for a “yes please” rather than the absence of a no, I wouldn’t have sense memories that cause panic, and wouldn’t have had the joy of being triggered by a boundary violation 12 years later.

I’ve often been silent when people have told their personal stories here because anything I could say is so inadequate. How can you say, I’m sorry about the crime that was committed against you? But no-one’s telepathic, and maybe it’s better badly expressed than not expressed at all: since I’ve been reading around here there are a lot of women and men to whom I’d like to say, I’m sorry some piece of shit had the arrogance and cruelty to hurt you like that. And I admire and am in awe of the courage and strength you have shown and are showing in surviving and living and building your lives back, and being the smart and sarky, intelligent and indomitable people who write here and from whom I and a lot of others learn a great deal.

After reading the OP and all comments in this thread, I have a question.

Assuming the following statistics to be accurate…
25% of women are raped or rape is attempted on them
10% of men commit or attempt to commit rape
That means 75% of women are not subject to rape/attempted rape
AND
90% of men have never committed or attempted to commit rape.
That the non-raped/non-rapists are in the majority, suggests to me that this group of people may have a normative-bias.

My question is:
Should considering normative-bias for non-raped/non-rapist people be part of looking for ways to destroy rape-culture?

Reason for Asking:
I am recently arrived at the idea of checking my assumptions for normative-bias and privilege, so it fascinates me. I am currently reviewing my own ideas about rape-culture to determine if they might be colored by a normative-bias for non-raped/non-rapist people. I am curious what others think.

This is why we teach enthusiastic consent. This is why no means no isn’t enough. Because if he’d been looking for a “yes please” rather than the absence of a no, I wouldn’t have sense memories that cause panic, and wouldn’t have had the joy of being triggered by a boundary violation 12 years later.

Excellent point. I’m sorry your ability to make it so forcefully is the result of such an experience. I hope you’re doing okay, I know it’s tough.

RR: My point in bringing up my sister’s experience (it’s one I don’t really like to talk about often) was that Schrodinger’s Rapist is not an unreasonable view to hold, as unfortunate as it may be. In terms of the eradication of rape culture, consciousness raising with regards to the way society treats the concepts of rape and consent are excellent starting points, as I have mentioned above.

Random Reason,
You are wanting to communicate though, yes? What you have done here and other threads has not worked well, at least where I have encountered you. The question is, how do you reconcile those two problems?
Most people who don’t achieve that goal flame out and some chill out which is what you appear to be doing. I won’t try to tell you what to say, but I will say that if your desire is to put people at ease so they converse with you, your actions so far are not going to work in this space.
There are good conversations to be had here and most of the people you are having a breakdown of communication with could provide much of it.
_

On your question, I have repeatedly spoken in this thread about changing how sexuality is approached between people. An end to implicit approaches to consent and a focus on sex play as something that is negotiated before it is experienced rather than rationalized after it happens is something that I think has great worth.

I’m not getting into this argument, but wanted to note two things. Going back to the NCV rape statistics, ignoring the obviously wrong “420,000 prisoners each year” number, we got the following:

About 3% of American men – a total of 2.78 million men – have experienced a rape at some point in their lifetime

22% of male inmates have been raped at least once during their incarceration;

That means that even if we assume that these numbers are cumulative AND assume that every male in the US will be incarcerated as some point in his life (because I’m too lazy to find out what the actual percentage is and then calculate what that 22% is as percentage of the total male population), then the total percentage of men who experience rape in their lifetime would be 25%; that would give them parity with women, of whom also 25% are raped

Now, I suppose one could argue that male rape victims experience more instances of rape than female victims; but that requires a completely different set of numbers so far not provided by anyone.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the following post:

For a real life example, I have an ex-girlfriend who basically never wanted to have sex when sober, due to trauma from a rape that occurred when she was 13. She knew I wasn’t comfortable with this and would sometimes get drunk and lecture me at great length about being inebriated didn’t change her essential nature, so she could still consent to sex. (And she was super drunk. She often wouldn’t remember doing this the next day.) IIRC, we eventually got together when she consented to sex in theory, then got drunk. Sometimes, she’d ask me to buy her alcohol so she could get drunk enough for sex. I think I successfully talked her into doing it sober once and that was because she was trying to prove to me she could and was generally less enthusiastic than normal. It didn’t last long, because she started doing coke and I drew the line

It reminded me of what Cerberus once wrote about asexual teens “engineering their own rape” because even though they very much didn’t want sex, they were taught that they couldn’t have romantic relationships if they didn’t put out. I don’t remember whether Cerberus mentioned drugs in that essay, but other asexuals elsewhere have said that it’s drugs and alcohol that they’ve used to numb themselves enough to be able to “lie back and think of England”*. It also reminds me of Christian advice columns that say that it’s women’s duty to give their husband sex regardless of whether they want to or not, and also of research one of my professors did on having sex one didn’t want to have, where she discovered that elderly, Catholic women admitted to letting their husbands have sex with them because they thought they had to.

I’m mentioning this because whatever all this sex described in the above instances is, it’s not what I’d describe as fully consensual.

– – – – – – – – – – – –
*which is different from asexuals who want to have sex even when not experiencing sexual arousal**; I note this because some people seem to have problems telling the difference between being horny and wanting to have sex.

**the same goes for sexuals who want to have sex without sexual arousal. Also needs to be said because some people are just confused.

One thing you need to get clear is that rape is not rare. Not even remotely.

Never stated it was.

I did state that we should look at how efforts of feminists in the decades leading up to the 80’s and beyond led to a dramatic reduction in the frequency of rape, and see how we can continue and improve upon it.

I am not, and have not, made any kind of argument diminishing the horror of rape, nor any argument against its impact on women, nor any argument against the responsibility of men, nor any argument suggesting it is the responsibility of women or that it is anything but a horrific failure of human culture in general and American society in particular.

If you refuse to respect that statement, please present evidence of where I have ever stated anything remotely in opposition to any of those points.

Yes, you hav. Many people have patiently taken you through them, step by step.

Respectfully, you seem to be conflating me with some other commenter or commenters. This is the first time I have commented on rape or rape culture on Phayngula, let alone in this discussion thread.

Please provide evidence otherwise, or withdraw your accusation. I don’t agree with a single one of the straw men arguments attributed to me regarding rape. Not one. And I’ve never made any of them.

As for the horror many of us have experienced, you can make it less likely to happen by doing the things outlined by PZ in his post.

Which is why I reposted them in outline as part of my appeal to refocus on the issue.

Caine,

I agree with every single one of his points, and try to engage in the actions he recommends as often as possible – which is undoubtedly not enough, and which I and all other men need to redouble.

What of anything I wrote leads you do believe otherwise? Are you sure you aren’t confusing me with a different commenter in this discussion?

You’re the Pinker fanboi and I suggest losing that crap. Pinker is not the end all be all, and arguments from authority don’t fly here.

This is the first time I ever mentioned Pinker. I made no argument from authority, as I was not arguing. I presented another bit of data that I thought was useful – a successful effort to reduce rape, despite the continued prevalence of rape culture, which we both oppose.

Why are you manufacturing a dispute where there is none? What does citing Pinker have to do with my suggestion that, IN ADDITION TO the recommendations from the article that PZ cites, we might look at addressing American culture glorifying extreme drunkenness as a right of passage and social lubricant?

I am not strongly attached to my suggestions, I offered them in the spirit of getting us back on track talking about what PZ posted. I’ve looked back at your comments, and have not found one where you supposedly addressed the two ideas I raised. Perhaps they aren’t worth talking about – but saying they were addressed is false.

You keep saying I need to listen. Respectfully, you haven’t listened to or read a single thing I’ve actually written.

But it is as distressing to hear so many young women talk about seeing every man as “Schroedinger’s Rapist” as it is to hear some white people talk about living in fear of every person of color they pass in the street.

no, actually it’s the way racial minorities are wary around whites, and rightfully so, in a racist culture.

Should considering normative-bias for non-raped/non-rapist people be part of looking for ways to destroy rape-culture?

Possibly, yes. I want to think about this a bit. ‘Normative-bias’ bothers me a bit, because that’s subjective, depending on the person and their particular culture and social circumstance.

Reason for Asking:
I am recently arrived at the idea of checking my assumptions for normative-bias and privilege, so it fascinates me. I am currently reviewing my own ideas about rape-culture to determine if they might be colored by a normative-bias for non-raped/non-rapist people. I am curious what others think.

Well, it’s always a good idea to be aware of your own privilege in life, because it helps us all to be better human beings. You can’t change what privilege you have, however, being aware of it definitely changes the way you think, perceive and act.

One problem when it comes to rape and sexual assault is that the majority of survivors don’t talk about it. Same deal with those who have raped or sexually assaulted. Chances are excellent that out of the people you know, there are those who have been raped and there’s at least one person who has raped.

So, you see, you might look at a group of your friends and think “none of these people have been raped” and “none of these people are rapists”, however, you don’t actually know if that’s the case.

Okay, I wanna think on all this some more. Here’s a bit of good reading:

Quite the contrary. It does have an effect, leading, from a practical matter, to increased risk of women being raped by men drunk out of their minds. You are imputing a moral argument to what is a practical argument.

Being drunk out of your mind is not a valid excuse for murder, or robbery, or rape.

You believe that women being raped is a practical matter, no need for moral outrage?

Your words show you to be a vile rape apologist. Fuck off! Please accept this bouquet of teasel and burdock pods as your parting gift. I’m sure you know what to do with them.

Making assumptions that are not even remotely justified by any reasonable reading of a text is not helpful to anyone.

Yes, everyone’s just being unreasonable and it has nothing to do with you saying that Schroedinger’s Rapist is “as distressing as” white people’s racism (seriously, if you didn’t mean to say that Schroedinger’s Rapist was wrong, you probably shouldn’t have made the analogy to racism) and implying that SR amounted to “letting the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.)”

consciousness raising with regards to the way society treats the concepts of rape and consent are excellent starting points, as I have mentioned above.

Agreed. I don’t disagree with any of the statements about *what* needs to change. I have raised the question of “*how* to actually do it.

I propose that there is a lot to learn from studying the successful anti-smoking campaign in the US.

I also propose that a campaign to decouple excessive drinking (not social drinking, *excessive* drinking) from its strong cultural association with the right of passage of being and adult, its glorification in popular culture, where blind drunks and even outright alcoholics are portrayed for comedic effect and as sexy, cool and libidinous may be healthy and help to reduce the conditions that favor rapists.

I would like to hear what other people think.

On your question, I have repeatedly spoken in this thread about changing how sexuality is approached between people. An end to implicit approaches to consent and a focus on sex play as something that is negotiated before it is experienced rather than rationalized after it happens is something that I think has great worth.

I agree with your intent. I think, however, that the majority of non-college educated men in this country would have a hell of a time understanding what you are talking about using terms like “implicit approaches to consent” and “negotiating sex play” (and many college educated as well).

How would you actualize that? How would you get it out into the public awareness with sufficient saturation as to lead to actual change in social mores, popular culture, media images, etc. etc.?

I propose that a public awareness campaign that seeks to change social mores would be effective, perhaps models on the successful anti-smoking campaign in the US, which is studied in many contexts as a model of a successful campaign that significantly changed social mores.

I would also like to understand more about the success of feminists 30 years ago in leading to an apparently dramatic reduction in rapes (though still unbearingly and unacceptably high).

whites being scared of blacks (because they might mug them) –> men being scared of women (because they might accuse them of rape)

blacks being wary around whites (because of racist culture) –> women being wary of men (because of rape culture)

– – – – – – – – –
*I’m fucking sorry for constantly having to appropriate racial oppression for my argument, but it seems to be necessary to explain to ignorant idiots the very basic social power-dynamics at play here, since they keep on bringing racism up and keep reversing the power-dynamics of the scenario

*I’m fucking sorry for constantly having to appropriate racial oppression for my argument, but it seems to be necessary to explain to ignorant idiots the very basic social power-dynamics at play here, since they keep on bringing racism up and keep reversing the power-dynamics of the scenario

No need to be sorry, the idiots aren’t your fault. Who knows, it might actually get through to one of them.

Being drunk out of your mind is not a valid excuse for murder, or robbery, or rape.

You believe that women being raped is a practical matter, no need for moral outrage?

NO. My suggestion that American culture glamorizing extreme drunkenness as a right of passage, and a culture that glorifies it as cool, sexy, funny and wink-wink a way to get laid, is a factor contributing to rape culture and the prevalence of women being raped – both of which are moral outrages.

Moral outrage is insufficient to lead to change. It has to be followed by effective action. I have not disputed nor diminished the legitimacy of social outrage. I have simply proposed talking about practical measures to diminish the likelihood of rape. I assume you do not oppose such measures. So, there is no reason to keep talking about me, rather than talking about the issue.

that one’s easy: lower the drinking age to something definitely non-adult and remove the taboo-aspect of drinking.

Which won’t happen in the U.S. during my lifetime, more’s the pity. I was allowed a cordial glass of wine with supper from a very young age. I was never lectured about the evils of alcohol, and as I got older, was allowed to have the occasional drink if I liked. Well, I didn’t like much. I had a beer now and then, or a glass of wine, but never got into hard liquor. There was zero mystery or mystique to drinking for me, so I never went through the ‘get insanely drunk on my xx birthday’ crap.

Nope. Not even close. I have neither diminished the horrific reality of your experience or its effect on your day to day life, nor have I said that you should not live in fear. Please reread what I wrote as written.

I read what you wrote. And I responded to what you actually wrote as opposed to whatever magical fairytale rainbow-and-ponies bullshit was circulating in your head. It’s on you to communicate clearly, not on me to be a mindreader.

You have just pulled a double silencing tactic: implying that I must have misunderstand you and so my opinion is irrelevant, and telling me I need to give you more leeway than you’re giving me.

I don’t fucking think so, cupcake.

I assume we would both like to create a world where fewer women have to go through what you went through – and, a world in which women who have not experienced rape would not have to live in constant fear of it.

Perhaps, except we’re approaching it in two very different ways. Mine entails listening to actual survivors of these crimes, and making it easier for them to speak out and receive justice. Your approach entails telling survivors that their experience is irrelevant because rape is rare. If rape was rare, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 10 men wouldn’t get raped. That’s not rare, you idiot.

Please read and respond to the commenter’s comment, not to some other comment by some other commenter that enraged you. I share your disgust with their attitudes.

First, don’t you dare presume to tell me what I need to do or have done ‘wrong’. You are a rape apologist assclown who doesn’t want women to critically evaluate what society has done to them. You are implying that my rage at your stupidity is misplaced, when it is in fact your sexist bullshit which has caused my anger. Fucking deal with it or not, but don’t try to pretend I’m dumping misplaced anger on you.

And second – no, no you don’t. Don’t you ever dare presume to understand my disgust with people who think I’m an object to be used at any time and regardless of what I want.

RandomReason, you need to either acknowledge that you said something shitty and ignorant in your post about SR, or explain what you actually meant to say. Preferably both, because if you were trying to say something non-shitty and non-ignorant, you failed to get it across.

continue to push back against popular culture portrayals of male-female interactions as adversarial

Goodness yes. Stop with the shit of “but women are complicated and I can’t figure out what they waaaaaaant!”, and “men only want one thing”, etc., and people would stop playing to those stereotypes and interpreting other people by those stereotypes and maybe start paying attention to the person actually in front of them and the signals that person is actually putting off.

That wasn’t the intent of my analogy. Clearly, it was not a good choice. My intent was neither to delegitimize fear nor to dismiss rape.

I simply noted that the facts stated in the article PZ linked us to indicate that the overwhelming majority of rapes are acquaintance rapes, and that a relatively small (though horrifically large in effect) number of repeat, frequent, recidivist rapists – most of whom are acquaintance rapists – suggest that public education about rape – particularly education of MEN, but also of women – should emphasize the relatively high risk of acquaintance rape.

As a man, my completely anecdotal experience of public education and online discussion about rape seems to focus much more on Stranger Danger.

My concern was that
a) both men and women may not be focusing a proportionate amount of attention to acquaintances, when implementing the measures PZ quoted from the article;
b) disproportionate focus on non-acquaintance men may lead to disproportionate anxiety and fear among young women – NOT because the fear isn’t real, but because it may not be proportional.

My comparison with terrorists and other criminals was to state that part of resisting assault as a culture is refusing to give in to disproportionate fear.

Fear itself is an essential part of our evolutionary makeup. So is a poor ability to evaluate proportionality of threat.

These are simple facts – I am sure PZ can confirm them. They are not presented as some part of a secret, nefarious plot to apologize for rapists. I am sorry your experiences, here and in life, have led you to draw such conclusions. It is precisely such an environment that I would like to help change – so that you will NOT have to live in fear, including proportionate fear.

i don’t understand how me equating rapists to terrorists and murderers somehow makes me a rape apologist, but I do understand how my analogy to white fear was a poor choice.

I would very much like to get back to discussing practical strategies to change US society into less of a rape culture, but I understand if that is not the discussion you want to have.

I also propose that a campaign to decouple excessive drinking (not social drinking, *excessive* drinking) from its strong cultural association with the right of passage of being and adult, its glorification in popular culture, where blind drunks and even outright alcoholics are portrayed for comedic effect and as sexy, cool and libidinous may be healthy and help to reduce the conditions that favor rapists.

As Tethys already pointed out, the “conditions that favor rapists” are not being drunk but a social environment which accepts “I/she/he/we was/were drunk” as an excuse. Alcohol is one thing rapists use to get vulnerable victims, but it’s not the heart of the problem, and not the topic of this discussion. The topic of this discussion is social norms which allow rapists to rape and still get their daily pat on the back from society for being a normative person.

Your emphasys on *excessive* drinking helps little in this regard, since the “appropriate” level of inebriation is a) subjective, b) situation-dependent and c) hard to evaluate after one’s been drinking.

I simply noted that the facts stated in the article PZ linked us to indicate that the overwhelming majority of rapes are acquaintance rapes, and that a relatively small (though horrifically large in effect) number of repeat, frequent, recidivist rapists – most of whom are acquaintance rapists – suggest that public education about rape – particularly education of MEN, but also of women – should emphasize the relatively high risk of acquaintance rape.

As has been repeated ad nauseum in this thread:

Women ALREADY GET TOLD everything they supposedly need to to do avoid getting raped. It doesn’t fucking work, and it’s time to take the focus off us and put it where it belongs.

I would very much like to get back to discussing practical strategies to change US society into less of a rape culture, but I understand if that is not the discussion you want to have.

if this thread was what brought it out, I’m sorry it was even here to bring that up in your mind and decide to use yourself as an example

Yes, this thread did bring it up. All the shit about ‘what about the men’ by men who most likely have no clue what the fuck they are talking about. This was a guy who declared, openly, that all humans are either men or children, and children exist to give men pleaseure.

I wasn’t looking for commiseration. I was trying to point out that male on male rape is an important part of the discussion, just not this one. And then the bullshit about terrorists and rapist and criminals, as if we can recognizethem by looking. It just pissed me off. Sorry.

Mine entails listening to actual survivors of these crimes, and making it easier for them to speak out and receive justice. Your approach entails telling survivors that their experience is irrelevant because rape is rare.

I fully support listening to actual survivors of these crimes, and making it easier for them to speak out and receive justice.

I do not think that me listening to testimony of survivors is enough, though, to end rape culture in the US. I do not be convinced that it needs to end. I have family and friends who have shared their experiences as survivors. I want to make sure my daughters and all our daughters don’t have to endure what rape survivors have.

My approach is, not instead of but in addition to what you would like to see (with which I wholeheartedyl agree) but in addition to it, to:

a) find ways to change social mores by look at successful ways past campaigns have changed public behavior and perceptions;

b) look at other contributory social and cultural factors and seek to address them.

Both a and b are intended to produce a significant and measurable reduction in the number of women raped in the US (and around the world, for that matter).

I never stated that rape is rare. Not once. I have stated, and will state again, that it is horrifyingly prevalent. You misconstrued my comment about how past feminist campaigns to reduce rape had a measurable impact, to mean that we don’t need them any more. My intent was exactly the opposite – we should do what worked, what works and what will work, and try to do even better. To end rape culture and diminish rape as much as humanly possible.

I don’t believe it is in anyone’s power to eliminate all evil or violence from the world; I think our goal should be to continually strive to diminish it. Much as I would like to see ALL rape end, I don’t think it will. I do, however, think reducing it dramatically is possible, as it is possible to reduce all other forms of violence by humans.

That is the point of Pinker’s book, by the way – not that we don’t need to do anything because violence has diminished. Precisely the opposite – we need to understand WHY it has diminished, so that, when faced with new environmental, population, and other pressures, we don’t erupt into new orgies of violence. I think there is a misunderstanding of Pinker’s new book here. I highly recommend reading it. His ultimate message is that we have in our power to change things for the better, dramatically – even behaviors that were once thought unavoidable consequences of “human nature”.

@Caine, Fleur du Mal – Thank you for responding to my post. As a long-time lurker, first time poster, I’m honored to have written something you commented on and “[you] wanna think on all this some more.” I said something worth thinking about!!! OMDawgOMDawgOMDawg! … calm down… think/edit even more before posting, good start, let’s not make a muck of it.

I appreciate the links (have read them, worth a re-read).

Results of Ruminations So Far:
I have this initial reaction when I learn about a rape that is “Poor Thing”. It’s a non-productive, privileged, biased reaction. It characterizes the target as powerless (Which xe probably isn’t in most non-rape situations. It dehumanized the target… *thing*…. Really *thing*… bad brain…. Bad, bad! Brain)
I hate it and I stamp it down as soon as it happens.
However…it’s my first thought, which means it colors my other thoughts, no matter how enlightened or informed.
So far all I’ve got is to look at my privilege as potentially “other-izing” rape-survivors.

*hug* Good on you guys. Scars will remain (been learning that with the emotional and physical abuse) but I like to think every day brings you a little closer to being fine. All we can do is keep on muddling through every day and counting each moment as a victory.

@RR, Custador, Beth G:
FUCK YOU! I am sick and fucking tired of being too scared to have anything resembling a normal social life because of my intense physical vulnerability and inability to defend myself if somebody attacks me. I am sick and fucking tired of being too scared to have a drink in public, or go to a nightclub (and I love dance and electronic music), or wear anything above the knee or skirted (and never wearing anything that’s both unless I’m wearing leggings and/or high boots). I am sick of fearing every guy who approaches me on the isolated track which leads to my university, every guy who even looks at me sideways, every guy who compliments me. I am sick of not having the courage to approach men or women I find attractive because I’m scared of getting abused, insulted or hurt. I am sick of my value being measured in my hip to waist to breast ratio, my cup size, the shape of my features, the way my hair’s done, the make up I wear (or don’t), the choice of my clothing…

I am sick of being lumped into the lipstick lesbians because I like wearing dresses now and then or the lumberjack lesbians because I tend to wear no make up and wear jeans and tops a lot of the time for practicality. I am sick of being told by my mother that ‘how can you know if you’re bisexual if you’ve never done it’. I am sick of people, some with the best intentions in the world, telling me I shouldn’t be so open about my bisexuality, my autism or my religious beliefs.

I am sick of living in fear of being discriminated against because I’m autistic, female, bisexual, non-Abrahamic religious. I am sick of the lack of understanding, the lack of services for adult high-functioning disabled people.

I am sick of a culture which considers rape, sexual discrimination and bi/homo/transphobia acceptable. I am sick of autistic people being presented as either evil psychopaths or complete retards or idiot savants.

I just want to be in a world where I can be who I am, which after all harms no one, and where I can live without fear. Is that too much to ask?

So far all I’ve got is to look at my privilege as potentially “other-izing” rape-survivors.

Well, I’d say that’s a very big step in realizing your own thought processes and how they affect your perceptions and actions. I sure as hell wish more people would be willing to look at how they might be otherizing or objectifying people.

It’s also a marker on how affected we all are by how much rape culture is currently socially acceptable.

RandomReason, you don’t get to just spew destructive shit, refuse to acknowledge it, and then whine because no one wants to talk about what you want to talk about. Well, okay, you do get to, but it’s obtuse and obnoxious. I get that you’d like to direct the conversation, but you said something shitty above, and I don’t feel inclined to ignore it just because you don’t wanna talk about it any more.

Women ALREADY GET TOLD everything they supposedly need to to do avoid getting raped. It doesn’t fucking work, and it’s time to take the focus off us and put it where it belongs.

I think I may understand where the misunderstanding occurs.

When I talk about educating people, I am not talking about telling women what they need to do to avoid rape.

I am talking about educating people along the lines of the strategies PZ cited from the article.

#4 in there is:

Because the rapists have a fairly well-developed modus operandi, is is possible to spot it and interrupt it. We can look for the tactics and interrupt the routine. We can spot the rapist deliberately getting the woman drunk or angling to get the drunk woman alone in an unfamiliar place, and intervene. A guy offering a drunk woman a ride home may just be offering a ride, but if he is insistent when someone else offers a ride, this ought to raise a flag. If a guy is antagonistic towards women and places a lot of emphasis on sex as scoring or conquest, and he’s violating a woman’s boundaries and trying to end up with her drunk and alone, we don’t have to be sure what he’s doing to be concerned, and to start trying to give her exit ramps from his predatory slide.

I saw my comment about drunk culture fitting right in with that point.

I am also talking about educating people, particularly men, that, because most rapes are, in fact, acquaintance rapes, we need to be much more vigilant, recognize the signs, speak out much, much more, educate our peers, and refuse to accept social mores, jokes, comment, etc., that contribute to rape culture.

I was not suggesting that women have some kind of responsibility for being raped, nor that the onus is on women to learn how to defend themselves. NOT in the least. I apologize if I gave that impression, it was utterly unintentional.

In case there is still doubt, I do NOT hold the position you gathered from my comments. Not sure how I can state it any more clearly.

I support the recommendations of the article and support PZ’s comment about them.

When I see something that needs changing, I focus in on practical things to change it. When the problem is broad, lingering, society-wide culture that is intermingled with many other aspects of social behavior and culture, I look to other successes in order to learn from them.

Proposing practical things to change culture is NOT in conflict with condemning the culture we want to change.

I am sick of being told by my mother that ‘how can you know if you’re bisexual if you’ve never done it’.

:snorts: Memmmmmoooories…

As another very open bisexual who has known she was bisexual from a very young age, my sympathies. I’m not exactly known for being nice, so my response to that would be along the lines of “oh, you know what? You are so right. I’m going to go out and start indiscriminately fucking every single thing that moves, just to make sure I actually know my own mind. Thanks, mom!”

The problem with me was that because I had internalised so much of my mother’s crap and happen to be borderline-haptophobic with strangers, I didn’t realise I was bisexual until my mid-twenties. I still haven’t had sex and I’ve a feeling it may never happen. :(

Quite the contrary. It does have an effect, leading, from a practical matter, to increased risk of women being raped by men drunk out of their minds.

My emphasis above. Your reply below quoting me.

Tethys

Being drunk out of your mind is not a valid excuse for murder, or robbery, or rape.

You believe that women being raped is a practical matter, no need for moral outrage?

Random
NO. My suggestion that American culture glamorizing extreme drunkenness as a right of passage, and a culture that glorifies it as cool, sexy, funny and wink-wink a way to get laid, is a factor contributing to rape culture and the prevalence of women being raped – both of which are moral outrages

You clearly stated that women being raped is a fucking practical matter in your first quote.

To paraphrase RR: Well of course women are going to be raped. It’s so self-evident as to be of no concern. We couldn’t possibly hold the fucking rapists responsible. Poor, poor, misguided/drunk rapists.

I note the usual goalpost moving, and evasion that characterizes many of your posts.

Hey, don’t be beating yourself up. There’s no hurry and there’s no “right time”. That sort of thing is a myth and it’s bullshit. The only thing that matters is that when it happens, it happens right for you and your partner. It doesn’t make you a ‘complete person’, you’re already complete. it’s simply one more thing you can do with someone. It’s not the most important part of a relationship, either, no matter what some idiots think.

FrogKisser:

I’m going to think about what you’ve said. I appreciate you taking the time to respond. Your responses have opened more windows for me to consider.Thank you!

Certain people were very angry about other things and other commenters when I joined the conversation. Much of the hostility I have encountered actually has nothing to do with anything I’ve actually said here. As you noted, many people don’t even bother to persist here, because this anger and behavior is not restricted to this topic, it is a general modus operandi around here.

Nonetheless, as a man, a husband, a father of daughters, a son, and just as a human being and member of American society, I wanted to contribute constructively to discussion about a horrible problem that persists in our society. I don’t blame rape survivors for their rage, and I don’t blame them for their impatience with people like me who seek empirical solutions to problems like this.

I will continue to participate in the conversation, both to learn and to provide suggestions, some of which may turn out to be useful to someone in some way.

PZ’s post was a specific commentary citing specific recommendations in a specific article. I am commenting on that. I also hoped to help direct discussion back to the topic of PZ’s post, because I remain utterly unconvinced that people screaming at each other about who is right about what number does not make a better world.

We need to move beyond turning every knob to 11 in every fucking online conversation. And, we need to stop rationalizing and making excuses for people who do so, consistently, in each and every topic, in response to virtually any comment that is not in line with what they consider acceptable.

When someone comments that I am unclear, I go back and evaluate my communication in light of their critique. That does not mean that they are automatically right, or that they bear no responsibility as a reader to read what is written as it is written. More often than not, the critique is warranted. Sometimes it is not.

The important point is that any assertion, in any context, about anything, can and should be evaluated on its merits, with awareness of and every effort to resist bias based on one’s feelings about the commenter. As a naturalist, that is my conviction. I know others disagree. It is one of the central problems I have with some social studies disciplines, as I have stated elsewhere.

If I state: rape is wrong, there is no excuse, women are not responsible, we need to end rape culture, and someone insists on screaming at me that I am a rape apologist, at a certain point one has to separate their personal pain from the merit of their statement.

I am not a rape apologist, and just because someone who is a rape survivor says I am, does not automatically make it true. For one thing, I have rape survivors in my family who have a lot more first hand evidence, who would disagree.

So, while I appreciate the recommendation to be more clear in my communication, I also hold that there is responsibility in an online forum of strangers to read what people actually write, and not to attribute to a stranger conspiracies and dark motives that have no basis in reality.

There is too much excusing bad behavior around here, based on friendship, rather than intellectual legitimacy.

Hi guys, I’m a very regular thread-comment reader delurking momentarily. I very rarely find myself in disagreement with the Horde but I find myself doing so here. I am truly bringing this up in good faith (you guys know a lot more about these issues than I do, so I’m hoping you can educate me!).

I’m a female college student at ASU, and I find a few (not all) of Random Reason’s points seem to really ring true. The prevailing attitude is that, if you want to have sex, you go to a party and get shitfaced and find another shitfaced person to have sex with.

I agree that challenging the concept of drunken hookups being the norm is a good thing. It’s not about saying “ladies, don’t get drunk,” it’s about changing the whole college dating/hookup paradigm.

I guess my point is that if it’s considered “normal” to flirt with a person, drink heavily with them, and then go back to their place and bone, it will be incredibly difficult to convince people that inebriated sex is dangerous and may lead to rape. Having sex in the “white area” of complete sobriety would be an incredibly foreign concept to many students here (male and female), which is kind of frightening to me.

I guess my point is that if it’s considered “normal” to flirt with a person, drink heavily with them, and then go back to their place and bone, it will be incredibly difficult to convince people that inebriated sex is dangerous and may lead to rape.

Yes, we know that. RandomReason’s problem is that he’s aiming everything at what women do, while effectively leaving men out of the equation.

What women can do is talk, loudly and assertively, about their experiences, their likes, their dislikes and expect men to listen.

What men can do is to listen and speak out and up when they see predatory behaviour in their groups.

This is all outlined in the initial post and over and over again in the comments. If you think RandomReason is being reasonable or right, I’d suggest reading everything.

If you simply want to say “hey, drunken hookups are a major thing”, well, yeah, they are. The way you change that is to start with yourself and your circle of friends.

@Cain, Fleur du Mal
Not running away, just think I need to think more before I comment again.
I will continue to lurk, read, think… I will probably even comment again, now that I’ve broken the 1st post barrier.

Thanks for the invite to the lounge too… I may need to work up to the lounge.

RandomReason’s problem is that he’s aiming everything at what women do, while effectively leaving men out of the equation.

From the very beginning, I supported PZ’s points (and the cited ones from the Feministe article). They focus on what we, as MEN, need to do.

Please read #608, that may help clear up some persistent misunderstanding. Also, my response to JadeHawk, in which I acknowledged use of a poor analogy in my earlier comment.

I have taken responsibility for trying to clear up misconceptions that were the result of insufficiently clear statements on my part. I have made, repeatedly, several unequivocal statements saying the exact opposite of what you claim.

At a certain point, you need to take responsibility for not willfully continuing to make shit up about what I said, or what I secretly meant. For, yes, not listening.

First of all, I’ve already fucking told you at 585, if you could be bothered to read. In context, it implies that SR constitutes “letting the rapists win.” Speaking to a bunch of rape survivors, I find that offensively condescending and reeking of privilege. If that was not what you meant, what were you trying to claim constitutes “letting the rapists win”? If you don’t have anything in particular in mind, why lecture us at all?

I simply noted that the facts … suggest that public education about rape – particularly education of MEN, but also of women – should emphasize the relatively high risk of acquaintance rape.

You’re not listening. I told you that this is already done. The SR strategy is also employed by women dealing with men they already know.

You want a public campaign?
How about
“only Yes! means yes”
How about
“If you think they’re too drunk to drive, they’re too drunk to take to bed.”
How about
“Safe sex doesn’t just mean use a condom, it means only have sex with consent”
How about
“Nobody owes you a fuck.”
How about
“She changed her mind?* No problem.”
“She said yes, and now says no?* No problem.”
“She’s allowed to say yes to this and say no to that.”

*talking about making out or saying yes to certain acts but saying no at some point or to other things.

Or how about…
“Don’t do that, guys.”

—

I was going to write something about how I think we need to go beyond a mere public campaign. We’re not just talking about something small like second-hand smoke or drunk driving (both horrible killers, but still a minor, isolatable behaviour). What we’re talking about is a major cultural shift that’s taken thousands of years to become entrenched and permeates all of society. But alas, my thoughts on how exactly to cause this shift are still rather nebulous and confused.

And furthermore, no matter what you’re referring to, as I believe I made pretty clear at 540, I find it horrendously stupid that you’re telling us to “not let the rapists win” and not let them prevent us from “enjoying our lives” in the first place. We – all of us survivors here – we work our asses off to fucking survive. We have the merit badges and the scars. So why did you think we needed your doodly perspective, to tell us how we should think about our rapes? Did you think we’d find it inspiring?

To go back to my interpretation of the OP’s meaning…
What can we do to destroy rape-culture? (PZ – If I have interpreted you wrong, please borrow Scalzi’s loving hammer of correction… my intentions are good. Promise!)

#1 I have received an actionable recommendation – hosts should kick persons exhibiting predator behaviors at their parties OUT.

#2 I have inferred an actionable recommendation – shame the hell out of people who vocalize that getting someone drunk is an avenue to OK sexual relations.

#3 Leave your prejudices at the door – the situations in which non-con sex occurs are varied and nuanced.
[Stop fucking judging]

I agree that challenging the concept of drunken hookups being the norm is a good thing

I believe you are confusing what you think is the norm, with reality.

Since when is popular media an accurate depiction of real life?

That was the point of that comment. Hence “the concept of [it] being the norm”. A concept promoted by popular culture. Which leads many people to confuse popular media depiction with desirable behavior to emulate.

I seem to have no problem understanding what Lurking Lucy wrote.

Is it possible you bear some responsibility for your willful refusal to accept what people write, and your willful insistence on erecting straw men to respond to instead?

I find it horrendously stupid that you’re telling us to “not let the rapists win” and not let them prevent us from “enjoying our lives” in the first place. We – all of us survivors here – we work our asses off to fucking survive. We have the merit badges and the scars. So why did you think we needed your doodly perspective, to tell us how we should think about our rapes? Did you think we’d find it inspiring?

For quite some time now, the crap RR keeps spreading all over keeps reminding me of chassoto, the “hey, it’s like Russian Roulette, you should be happy, it’s not like you’re gonna be raped every day, so don’t be afraid!” guy.

#3 Leave your prejudices at the door – the situations in which non-con sex occurs are varied and nuanced.

This!
Another thing that I think would be useful to an admittedly small group of people would be spreading correct information about kink. Because misinformation helps no one, and the widespread lack of understanding means that people who are involved in BDSM often are unable to find knowledgeable support when bad things happen. I’m ashamed to say that in my ignorant past, I was under the impression that it was not possible for a submissive like me to be raped. This impression persisted until I was raped. I’m pretty sure that’s a common mistaken perspective, based on undervaluing and misunderstanding “consent.”

I just had a thought (that’s probably been discussed to death here before, and may have been briefly mentioned up-thread), rape culture seems intricately linked to patriarchy, and, as we have discussed before, patriarchy and religion are intertwined as well. With that line of thought, would it not be prudent to include consciousness raising of the evils of both institutions in any campaign?

FrogKisser, to your three, I would add: never, for any reason, let rape jokes slide. Or sexist jokes, on either side. Speak up about the use of gendered insults, either side. Do your best to enlighten and educate.

Quite the contrary. It does have an effect, leading, from a practical matter, to increased risk of women being raped by men drunk out of their minds.

My emphasis above. Your reply below quoting me.

Tethys

Being drunk out of your mind is not a valid excuse for murder, or robbery, or rape.

You believe that women being raped is a practical matter, no need for moral outrage?

Random
NO. My suggestion that American culture glamorizing extreme drunkenness as a right of passage, and a culture that glorifies it as cool, sexy, funny and wink-wink a way to get laid, is a factor contributing to rape culture and the prevalence of women being raped – both of which are moral outrages

You clearly stated that women being raped is a fucking practical matter in your first quote

No. Your conclusion is unwarranted, based on faulty reasoning, and, yet again, is the result of your refusal to read what people write, preferring instead to substitute straw men you invent. You didn’t even read the paragraph you quoted in which I clarified my intent.

Stating that, as a practical matter, the culture that glorifies college (and non-college) overdrinking among 18-24 year olds has an impact on women being raped. Contrary to your statement, that does not exclude women being raped being something about which no moral outrage can be sufficient.

To paraphrase RR: Well of course women are going to be raped. It’s so self-evident as to be of no concern. We couldn’t possibly hold the fucking rapists responsible. Poor, poor, misguided/drunk rapists.

One of the most basic things one learns in critical thinking is not to paraphrase others in order to attack them. It is rarely accurate, it does not contribute to understanding, and it demonstrates poor thinking. It is tantamount to saying, “I can’t argue with what you are saying, but I WANT TO ARGUE, DAMMIT, so I’ll restate your point in a pejorative way that gives me something to vent my rage about.”

I think Dhvorath’s point about effective communication was a valid one, equally applicable to all.

You do want to communicate effectively, don’t you? If for not other reason than to get me to agree with you that I am a horrible doppleganger of my actual self. Well, you aren’t successful; so, perhaps you should look at how you can communicate better. I suggest starting by reading a comment twice before you respond to it.

If you can’t even carry on a simple discussion with someone who is on your side, how do you ever hope to reach the vast majority who have little awareness and may even be hostile to your points?

I find it horrendously stupid that you’re telling us to “not let the rapists win” and not let them prevent us from “enjoying our lives” in the first place. We – all of us survivors here – we work our asses off to fucking survive. We have the merit badges and the scars. So why did you think we needed your doodly perspective, to tell us how we should think about our rapes? Did you think we’d find it inspiring?

I was not telling you that. Why do you always assume that every comment on Pharyngula is about Pharyngula regulars?

My comment was in response to PZ’s post. Do you think PZ was telling YOU how to behave? Neither was I.

This seems to be a common tendency here – when talking about a societal issue, and how to address the problem, some here insist that every constructive suggestion is a criticism of *them*.

I no more was criticizing you than I was criticizing victims of 9/11 for being traumatized and justifiably fearing getting on a plane. I was saying that everyone else living in constant fear – *disproportionately focused on the lesser risk* was letting the terrorists win.

For example, public education programs that make people hypervigilant about “suspicious behavior” by Arab-looking people on planes is a misplaced emphasis that create disproportionate fear. The greatest risk from terrorists today is not that they will hijack a plane (beside the fact that most Arab-looking people are not terrorists, and not all terrorists are Muslim to begin with, of course).

Similarly, the greatest risk of being raped, according to this study (and many others, not telling you anything you don’t know already), does not come from strangers but from acquaintances – and, the majority of rapes are committed by repeat rapists.

My experience, as an ignorant man who can never understand what it is like for a woman to live in fear, is that most discussion and education I encounter in my daily life about this issue focuses on Stranger Danger.

My suggestion that, in light of the article, proportionately much more emphasis should be on the danger from acquaintances, and that most rapists are repeat rapists and thus may have raped before, is a practical suggestion intended to improve the results of public awareness education – most certainly primarily by men of other men. How does that public awareness happen? Both men and women need to share to other men the measures PZ points to, as well as potentially others.

After all, that is what you are doing here, isn’t it? Telling men they need to take on the responsibility to do the things PZ talked about.

I am simply coming from the position that effective action builds on accurate information. I am approaching the problem in the way that I know how, seeking practical ways to implement the suggestions we all seem to agree on (excluding the rape apologists and MRA idiots).

There is nothing I can think of to say further. You can legitimately choose to ignore me, agree with me, or rebut me substantively. What you have no legitimacy doing is pretending I am saying what some hypothetical Enemy would say, while utterly disregarding what I am actually saying.

If you can’t even carry on a constructive, effective communication with someone who agrees with everything in the Feministe article, agrees with everything PZ said, and agrees with the things you want to accomplish, how do you expect – yes, as a *practical matter* – to reach men who don’t agree?

Perpetual protest is an outlet for rage, but it doesn’t accomplish anything. We can move beyond that, not by devaluing what everyone else says, but by acknowledging different approaches and incorporating practical action into a strategy to actually change things that are the source of moral outrage.

I really need to stay flounced too, but I do wonder where RR got his communications skills.

Since you seem only to be capable of a literalist understanding of language, let me help you out: your posts, like the one in 644 sounds incredibly condescending and patronising. I’m pretty sure it falls under mansplaining too… But hey, because we’re totally ignoring pragmatics and just looking at semantics, that means the fault lies with us, the readers, and not with you, the writer…

Also let me say to all who have talked about their experiences here: I feel for you, and I’m sorry for what you had to go through. Sorry I can’t find better words to express my feelings here.

For quite some time now, the crap RR keeps spreading all over keeps reminding me of chassoto, the “hey, it’s like Russian Roulette, you should be happy, it’s not like you’re gonna be raped every day, so don’t be afraid!” guy.

I was not telling you that. Why do you always assume that every comment on Pharyngula is about Pharyngula regulars?

You said “let’s.” If you meant to exclude the 1/4 of the female population who have been raped, well, first of all, I’d like to point out that that’s shitty, and second, you should have said that, because otherwise you just implicitly assumed that everyone who actually has suffered rape would know that you didn’t mean to include us, because we’re not the norm. That’s othering and it’s privilege, and it pisses me off.

I no more was criticizing you than I was criticizing victims of 9/11 for being traumatized and justifiably fearing getting on a plane. I was saying that everyone else living in constant fear – *disproportionately focused on the lesser risk* was letting the terrorists win.

You’re conflating two issues here. Living in constant fear is justified. A lot of women are raped, abused, stalked, mistreated. Some of us have more reason to fear than others – Native women, for instance, face a disproportionately high rate of rape and abuse. We are not “letting the terrorists win” by living in fear in a culture that is in fact dangerous to us. And the survivors aren’t irrational because traumatized, as you (offensively) make us out to be. We are assessing risk correctly.
The question of whether acquaintance rape is ignored is a separate problem.

If you can’t even carry on a constructive, effective communication with someone who agrees with everything in the Feministe article, agrees with everything PZ said, and agrees with the things you want to accomplish, how do you expect – yes, as a *practical matter* – to reach men who don’t agree?

This is mansplaining, tone trolling, and assuming we consider you an ally. Avoid all of these things.

Perpetual protest is an outlet for rage, but it doesn’t accomplish anything.

The results: women were interrupted (invariably by men) at least three times more often than the men. Sandler shared her results with her male colleagues, who were predictably defensive, claiming she must have miscounted or been biased in some way because of course they would never do such a thing. But the next day, when the meeting resumed, the men were far more careful not to interrupt when the women were speaking. Their awareness of the problem altered the way they treated the women in the meeting, even though they denied the problem existed. And Sandler realized, “Oh — this is changeable behavior.” She’s been working to change those behaviors ever since.

*snickers*
“Let’s (all of us normal people, I mean, not the hysterical victims, who are, of course, worthy of our pity and compassion) not let the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.”
I like it better like that.
It’s funnier.

I was saying that everyone else living in constant fear – *disproportionately focused on the lesser risk* was letting the terrorists win.

so you really were telling women that they need to stop behaving as the SR article describes they do? did you miss the part where I pointed out that this is unwarranted?

if so,
do you understand anything at all about the psychology of living with a 1 in 4 probability of getting raped, even if you haven’t been raped (yet)?
do you understand that SR was a description of that psychology, not a recommendation of behavior?
do you also understand that an “acquaintance” (like in “acquaintance rape”) starts out as a stranger like the one described in the SR article?

thus,
do you understand that accurately focusing on acquaintance rape will have absolutely no effect on the existence of the SR phenomenon? that only reducing incidence of rape in general will do so?
do you understand that you’ve basically told women that their brains are wrong and they have to change their brains and stop being wary of men (even if you did not intend on sending that message)?

My suggestion that, in light of the article, proportionately much more emphasis should be on the danger from acquaintances, and that most rapists are repeat rapists and thus may have raped before, is a practical suggestion intended to improve the results of public awareness education – most certainly primarily by men of other men.

such advice/awareness raising can ONLY be addressed to men, unless you propose telling women to stop being alone with their boyfriends and husbands. do you understand this?

Perpetual protest is an outlet for rage, but it doesn’t accomplish anything.

this is empirically wrong. I’d like to point to the OWS protests and the way their mere existence has changed the way people talk and act in politics: suddenly, even Republicans have to address the issue of inequality, whether they want to or not.

*snickers*
“Let’s (all of us normal people, I mean, not the hysterical victims, who are, of course, worthy of our pity and compassion) not let the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.”
I like it better like that.
It’s funnier.

I like it better like that, too. Mostly because it clarifies what RR was saying and how it came across to everyone here, regardless of RR’s intent. We’re reduced to “oh, poor things”.

“Let’s (all of us normal people, I mean, not the hysterical victims, who are, of course, worthy of our pity and compassion) not let the terrorists, the rapists, and other criminals win, in the sense of preventing us from enjoying life and our common humanity.”

oh, it’s even worse than that. “let’s” is an inclusive term; but it’s not an “us” that includes RR that lives with the psychology created by a 25% chance of getting raped.

Using “let’s” when addressing a group that doesn’t and can’t actually include you is… special. That’s like me, and able-bodied person, saying to a group of wheelchair-bound students: “let’s not be discouraged by the lack of wheelchair accommodation on campus and let that prevent us from enjoying our time in college”.

Why? It’s largely sexism that keeps rape alive and well. All the data points to a culture that allows rape to be perpetuated because of toxic concept about sex and gender, including slut shaming (which is the idea a woman “deserved it” because she doesn’t conform to a patriarchal code of modesty, in case your dumb ass didn’t know).

RandomReason’s proposals seemed ever so superficial to me. Drinking isn’t the problem. Rape culture is. I enjoy going out to drink with my friends, or drinking at parties. These days, I’m not into taking someone home for a night of casual sex, but there were days… In any case, I reserve the right to enjoy these activities, and I don’t accept that increased risk of rape is the automatic trade-off. That’s not freedom. I want to be able to live my life, be me, and not be punished for it, or even risk being punished for it. Unless me being me means hurting someone else, there shouldn’t even be a risk of punishment.

This was a pretty amazing thread. Thanks to all the survivors who shared their stories. The more you share, the stronger we are. Keep on keepin’ on!

Unless me being me means hurting someone else, there shouldn’t even be a risk of punishment.

I could not possibly agree more. Everything you wrote is every single thing that RR missed. While my pancreas doesn’t allow drinks anymore, much like you, I don’t see why I should be the one who can’t go out for a few drinks, I don’t see how it’s okay that I have to always walk around with a huge list of rules while the men always get the standard “oh, boys will be boys” crap.

It encourages me that apparently I was able to communicate my point well enough that most everyone here understood me…it discourages me though that I was not able to do so well enough for people like RR to get it.

That’s why it’s probably for the best that it’s a made-up name. I’m more comfortable attributing “help ma boab” to an undiagnosed head trauma than giving someone crap for something that they don’t have control over (unless they want to go through the legal rigmarole of changing it).

I’m sure they’ve already appeared but I’m not sitting through 600 comments, so I’ll just leave this for the people who will yell “but I’m a nice guy!”:

If you’re a nice guy, good. But that doesn’t mean you are free from the responsibility of stopping rape culture. We live in a society that promotes it, so it is all our responsibility. Just because you haven’t done anything does mean you aren’t promoting (if you remain silent to rape apology or violent attitudes, you are condoning them) and it doesn’t give you a free pass to let these thing perpetuate.

Caine, I know. I don’t generally like outing pseudonymous commenters either. Having read Stephanie’s post and the subsequent comments, I’m leaning toward him losing his anonymity. Pseudonymity is not an absolute right (it’s a strong one, but it’s not absolute) and there is a line that one can cross that calls its legitimacy into question. His depraved and vicious tirades laced with sexual violence are “real harm.” Reasonable people can disagree with where that line is, of course, but it’s a false equivalence to see a decent person’s right to be psuedonymous (you, for example) with his. There’s not a moral equivalence. Coupled with the fact that we now know the hoggler was at the last Australian atheist conference, and he may be again in 2012, and that women attendees have remarked in Stephanie’s thread how disturbing they find this, I think it’s reasonable to question whether he’s lost his right to be lost in the crowd.

I know. That’s why I thought it was pretty telling that GDB was pretty much the only person who thought RR was totally clear on the “feminist embarrassment” thread, where he was incoherently complaining about postmodernism’s supposedly nefarious influence on modern academia or something. On the other hand, it could be that GDB had no idea what RR was talking about, like everybody else, but just wanted the opportunity to tell me that I was stupid for requesting a succinct summary of RR’s thesis.

Coupled with the fact that we now know the hoggler was at the last Australian atheist conference, and he may be again in 2012, and that women attendees have remarked in Stephanie’s thread how disturbing they find this, I think it’s reasonable to question whether he’s lost his right to be lost in the crowd.

Yeah, I know. I’m conflicted about it and the more of his posts I read and his asinine trolling here, I lean towards outing too. I’m still conflicted though. It really does bother me that it was a meatspace friend who outed him because that must mean FH really doesn’t want this crap associated with his ‘real life’ and I wonder about lines being blurred. In an ideal world, he’d just get off his fucking cross already.

“We live in a society that promotes it, so it is all our responsibility.”

QFT

Yes, NOT the victims, NOT the women, but everybody’s responsibility, just like eliminating racial prejudice is and eliminating drunken driving is and eliminating sexism is and eliminating child abuse is. Everyone in society will receive the benefit of eliminating this problem (except rapists) so everyone is responsible.

They don’t like us to talk about how predators behave and how to stop them

I’m often bemused at how the trolls charge onto a thread and loudly proclaim themselves to be progressive and equality minded while simultaneously bullying and trying to intimidate anyone who dares to disagree.

I won’t waste my time discussing how best to raise awareness of cultural sexism with someone who continually tries to assert their male supremacy.

Quite the contrary. It does have an effect, leading, from a practical matter, to increased risk of women being raped by men drunk out of their minds. You are imputing a moral argument to what is a practical argument.

No, your getting it the wrong way round. They don’t rape because they’re drunk, they rape because they’re rapists. To come back to the drunk-driver: the problem isn’t the drunk, the problem is the driver.
People who are responsible, who acknowledge that drunk-driving is bad when they’re sober, don’t get into their cars when they’re drunk. I fail to see why this should be different with rape and alcohol.

I was not telling you that. Why do you always assume that every comment on Pharyngula is about Pharyngula regulars?

Do you fucking think that survivors outside of Pharyngula are fundamentally different? For shit’s sake, your nonsense could even be more harmful to survivors who have internalized their guilt. Now you’re adding more guilt to them. Pharyngula regulars at least kick your ass for such stupid.

A Nonny Mouse
I’m sorry this shit still haunts you. And you’re absolutely right, especially since women have to calculate the risks of saying no.

Frog Kisser

Assuming the following statistics to be accurate…
25% of women are raped or rape is attempted on them
10% of men commit or attempt to commit rape
That means 75% of women are not subject to rape/attempted rape
AND
90% of men have never committed or attempted to commit rape.
That the non-raped/non-rapists are in the majority, suggests to me that this group of people may have a normative-bias.

First of all, the number of women who have been subjected to sexual harrasment is about 100%. I’m not a survivor. The reason I’m not has nothing to do with any virtue I posess. It is sheer luck. It is the sheer luck of having reached my car before he reached me. It is the sheer luck of having met a man who doesn’t only seem nice but truely is.
1 in 4, and 1 in 10. I teach adults. In my current class there are about 20 people with an even gender distribution. That means, statistically, 2 or 3 of the women are rape survivors. And I have no idea if it’s one of the young girls or the lady who is already retired. Or if one of the men has been a catholic altar boy.
It means that one of those nice, polite men is (statistically) a rapist. And I don’t know any more who he is than I know about the women.
I think if you apply those cold statistics to any group you happen to be in, it rightly scares you out of your wits. Do the little exercise. It gives faces to the numbers (beware that it most likely gives the wrong faces ;))

Dawn

I still haven’t had sex and I’ve a feeling it may never happen. :(

What Caine said.
I often think that our society is soo over-focused on sex the wrong way, it drives us crazy.
Being a virgin at age X is not a problem or a bad thing as such. Having had only one partner throughout your life isn’t bad. If xie’s the right one, that’s all you need.
Not having sex for X amount of time isn’t going to kill you.
Likeing vanilla sex doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
Take your time.

Anyone expressing the least bit of hospitality towards it must be verbally pithed, pulped and fed through an atomizer for good measure. It’s what any tacit supporter of disgusting behavior deserves.

Or at least told, loudly and clearly, that you can’t excuse a rapist. Sure, you can proffer excuses – the rapeologists stream them out faster than a T3 broadband connection can cope – but none of them can exculpate.

Enthusiasm is aphrodisiac. There’s no point in having sex without it. Also, I see no sense in attenuating one of life’s most exquisite pleasures by drinking loads of fucking alcohol. Sex is just flat-out better when sober.

Has it occurred to you that the hostile reception you’re getting is related to the perception that you’re treating not being raped as something women need to work actively to achieve?

Or are you just not the slightest bit interested in where that perception comes from and whether it’s sound, irrespective of whether you personally have followed your arguments through to their logical conclusion and maintained scrupulous intellectual honesty in doing so?

I wanted to add something about the question of statistical probability and stranger danger vs. acquaintance rape.

The first thing is that the risk cannot only be considered in terms of numbers, but also in terms of damage. The risk of having my pocket picked is much higher than the risk of being raped (3 times so far in my life (pickpockets, not rape, of course). Didn’t leave me traumatized).
One is a nuissance, it’s bad, but the damage is usually easily repaired. The other one leaves people traumatized for the rest of their lives. That’s why I walk the streets relatively unconcerned about pickpockets, but concerned about rapists.

This also is important in considering the question why stranger danger is partly rightly focussed*, because those assaults are often very violent and leave behind corpses, especially when the victim is a child.
The other thing is that for a huge part of acquaintance rape, until that night, the acquaintance was a stranger.
Having met and talked and danced during the evening qualifies as acquaintance. The rapist is still more or less a stranger, only one who’s “smarter” than the out of the bushes stranger.

*Only partly, because another huge part is keeping the image of “nice guys don’t rape, it#s the stranger at night”

I don’t really want to keep talking about RR after they flounced but I saw something in a comment that I think points to the fact that he just wasn’t getting it.

The American culture which glorifies drunkenness contributes to circumstances in which men’s inhibitions are reduced, and women’s vigilance is impaired.

While trying to blame alcohol this still tries to make rape out as a problem caused by men’s supposedly overwhelming sex drive and lack of impulse control, and claims that it’s a women’s responsiblity to be vigilant. This is a part the cultural narrative about rape that needs to be challenged.

I also wanted to say that I know a lot of you get very burnt out on these threads but I’m glad you still do it. I have been lurking on Pharyngula a long time and I have learned a lot being here. Some of it uncomfortably self-revelatory but always eye opening.

He says this means a good way to reduce rape is to reduce binge-drinking, particularly as a socially acceptable means of finding a sex partner.

Other people, such as Giliell say people should be able to get as drunk as they want without fearing rape and the above is a form of victim-blaming. There was also a bunch straw-manning by a few posters, but this is, I think, a legit response to what he said.

Relating back to what I said earlier, RR being wrong doesn’t mean he’s arguing in bad faith. Not buying what you think think are good arguments also doesn’t equal bad faith. I partially disagree with him, but unlike the trolls earlier in the thread, he seems to be acting in good faith and listening to other posters.

Is rape really less common than it used to be? RR cited some statistics that it was. However, since rape is notoriously difficult to get accurate statistics on (mostly due to under-reporting), we have a dispute that you can’t conclude anything about prevalence from this.

I think there are other reasons to think society is taking rape more seriously and it has declined.

One is that violent crime in general has declined. The idea that criminally-minded men would drastically reduce the number of armed robberies, assaults and murders they commit while raping the same amount is counter-intuitive. Granted, it is possible, but I don’t think it can be assumed. (I attempted to compare statistics across cultures rather than across time to test this idea. If Wikipedia’s figures are to be believed, roughly one in 200 women are raped in the UK each year and roughly one in 275 in the US. These figures are about the same age. Either my assumption rape rates would be correlated with other violent crime rates is wrong or (more likely) reporting rates are better in the UK or these statistics are measuring different things.)

The idea good girls don’t have sex still exists, but has been eroded quite a bit over the last few decades. This reduces both the ability of rapists to rationalize their actions and bystanders to buy their rationalizations.

Sexual harassment, which used to be something women just had to tolerate, is actionable now. Granted, that hasn’t stopped it, but this is a sign society started caring. There are lots of other sexist ideas that have lost some of their power, which would contribute, but these two are the big ones.

In the last few decades, rape shield laws have become almost universal, and marital rape has become criminalized. This doesn’t mean victim blaming or marital rape ended, but does again show these issues are taken more seriously then they used to be.

If lifetime prevalence now is somewhere between 1/6 and 1/3 of women, it must have been really awful forty years ago. I think a lot of the issue in a lack of perception of change is that many behaviors which used to be normalized have rightly been termed sexual assault recently. Look at modern reactions to Gone With the Wind compared to when it was written (much less when it’s set), for instance. For a man-movie example, look at Sean Connery Bond films compared to modern ones.

To go off RR’s approach, I think the it’s fair to say the ways things have gotten better are largely a result of the denormalization of rapey behavior and it follows that making these behaviors even more unacceptable will continue to improve things. We also need to identify remaining rape-enabling conventions and shut them down, which is largely what the list is aimed at. I think RR meant well, but is legit to say that going after binge-fueled hook-ups is attacking a symptom instead of the underlying cause.

If you want practical ways to reduce rape, I liked the earlier suggestion about sex ed. Sex ed in the US tends to either be a lecture about how you shouldn’t have sex because you will get horrible diseases and/or pain-in-the-ass babies or an embarrassed teacher explaining the mechanics. If we can teach kids to say please and thank you, we can teach them proper conventions of consent. (As opposed to if she doesn’t put up a fight, that’s a yes.) This would be a very hard sell, politically as lots of conservative parents would spin it into being the opposite of what it is: teaching kids how to pressure others into consent.

@ Colin. That’s not fair. Saying rape is rarer than it was in 1970 is not the same as saying it’s rare in any absolute sense. If that’s not clear from the post you quoted, it’s clear from the multiple clarifying posts. I’m not saying RandomReason is right. I disagree on several points. He does seem to have addressed people when they disagreed with things they actually said.

I think the issue here is tribalism. He said some things that weren’t rape apologetics per se, but were at least superficially similar to arguments rape apologists make. Some posters seem to have mentally assigned him to a rape apologist team and expected him to make standard rape apologist arguments and interpreted everything he said in that light.

Saying women can better protect themselves from rape if they are taught a more realistic picture of how it happens may show an incorrect understanding of what it is women are taught, but it does not equate to arguing that if a woman gets raped it’s her fault for not protecting herself better.

Arguing that rape is less common than it used to be and we should look at the reasons to determine how to best continue this trend is wrong if rape has not actually declined, but not the same as arguing rape is going away on its own, so we don’t need to worry about it.

Arguing we need practical solutions to reduce rape is not the same as arguing that rape isn’t a serious problem and moral outrage isn’t justified. It is, in fact, the result of moral outrage.

My point is the RR is not the same as ArguablyMRA. Disagreeing with you isn’t the same as dismissing you and that discussions here (and lots of other places on the Internet, to be fair) do have a tendency to turn to trying to defeat enemies rather than address arguments. Some people, like ArguablyMRA and probably Custador are trolling, but not everyone who makes a bad argument is.

Saying women can better protect themselves from rape if they are taught a more realistic picture of how it happens may show an incorrect understanding of what it is women are taught, but it does not equate to arguing that if a woman gets raped it’s her fault for not protecting herself better.

AGAIN: women are already taught that it’s totally their burden to prevent rape and given endless rules to follow to ‘protect’ themselves. We’ve been told to not go out drinking, to only go out in groups, to not wear revealing clothing…you name the meme, it’s been shoved down our throats. We’ve already heard every single fucking excuse that RR has been spewing on us that it’s our obligation to help prevent rape.

Putting MORE of that onus on us just perpetuates the problem. The onus belongs squarely on those who commit rape. The onus is also on ALL OF SOCIETY to change how it views men AND women, and to accept that women are human beings with equal rights.

Telling women they need to do more is fucking bullshit and has rightfully been called out as such. Women already live in paranoid fear because of all of those ‘rules’, we already know that being drunk means we are less able to defend ourselves, and it’s about fucking time that people stopped telling us we need to do MORE in order to prevent rape.

I didn’t comment until now partly becuase I don’t really have much else to add I didn’t already say in the other thread and watching you guys take apart someone who agrees with 95% of your positions was fascinating.

However it does occur to me that perhaps women take not just self defence classes but also carry weapons (pepper spray, knives, firearms) and be trained in their use. This would add protection to the individual but also would deter rapists from assault in the first place if they had a good chance of getting a knife stuck in them.

Relating back to what I said earlier, RR being wrong doesn’t mean he’s arguing in bad faith. Not buying what you think think are good arguments also doesn’t equal bad faith. I partially disagree with him, but unlike the trolls earlier in the thread, he seems to be acting in good faith and listening to other posters.

RR consistently argues in bad faith from a position of privileged male superiority.

He consistently refuses to acknowledge his privilege bias, and proceeds to pontificate to all us lesser mortals.

This behavior is a giant red flag of a possibly predatory/abusive mind-set, and he has consistently been called on it.

@ Ing & The Ys. Yes, RR seems ill-informed about what women are told. (I think a large part of the problem is women are told these things in private and men are largely unaware of all the things women are told to do to prevent rape.) He may be assuming, as I once did, that portrayal of rape in popular media (which does tend to focus on stranger climbing in through windows and such) is representative of what women are told to watch out for, which it isn’t.

I can see where some people are interpreting what he said to mean women are responsible to prevent themselves from being raped. He is, in fact arguing this. I would even agree with him on this point. The rapists are ultimately responsible for rape, but if we sit around and wait for rapists to stop rape, it isn’t going to happen. This means it’s the responsibility of non-rapists, men and women, to stop rape. What he’s missing is that he doesn’t seem very aware of what women are already doing. What others are missing is they’re taking comments about what women can do to stop the rape culture and interpreting them as if they were about what women can do to stop themselves from getting raped.

My response to his argument is the reason he knows the statistics about alcohol and rape is there is already a public awareness campaign like he suggested. Pretty much all the articles I read about rape to research my responses mentioned the rape/alcohol connection prominently. The underclassmen getting shitfaced already know about this.

I would agree that the idea that you get laid by going to a party, getting drunk off your ass and finding someone else who is similarly drunk off their own ass to hook up with is widespread and that it contributes to rape culture. What I’d dispute is that this is primarily media fueled. It seems to me the issue is that people are socialized to feel guilty about sex and have to create an atmosphere where they feel they aren’t responsible for their actions. This is the real problem. The guilt makes people ashamed to report rape (and also makes people rationalize excuses for it) and also stymies healthy sexual behavior. If you want to deal with the root of the problem, deal with this.

Full disclosure, for reason I largely went into earlier in the thread, I have a strong bias against alcohol consumption. This may make me more friendly to anti-drinking arguments than I really should be.

However it does occur to me that perhaps women take not just self defence classes but also carry weapons (pepper spray, knives, firearms) and be trained in their use. This would add protection to the individual but also would deter rapists from assault in the first place if they had a good chance of getting a knife stuck in them.

GBD, you’re falling into the “most rapists are strangers” trap.
Most rape victims know their attackers. Most know them well.

Because they are significant others, friends, family members.

Y’know, the kind of people most women don’t think they have to prepare to defend themselves against. The kind of people someone who routinely carries a weapon sets it aside when they’re around, as they’re amongst friends here.

Also, I can CLEARLY imagine a situation where the poor aggrieved man says, “The crazy bitch MACED me!” and she faces social section and possible criminal charges because she attacked a guy for “no good reason.”

Tethys, look at 608, 615 and 624. I think you’re being very uncharitable in your interpretation. I will agree that RR did suck at communicating in several ways. Here are the main ones:

Getting so wrapped up in defending himself from (unwarranted) accusations that he thought rape was a minor problem or that it was entirely up to women to prevent rape that he didn’t seem to notice the more substantiative critiques from other people and sometimes from the same people.

Presuming more knowledge than he actually had about what’s being done now.

If I had to guess, I’d say like me, he’s close to someone with a serious alcoholism problem, and that skewed his assessment of the problem.

I’d say he’s right that we do need to look at what reduced rape in the past and look at why it worked and how we can make it work even better. However, when he tried to implement this, he didn’t look at why the rape rate has gone down, but how substance abuse has gone down and how we might use previous substance abuse successes to minimize rape and didn’t realize he’d made the substitution. When people criticized him on it, he took it as criticizing the idea that we should be practical rather than that he was not not being practical. (To be fair, some people did actually argue this, but not everyone.) My net perception was that he has a preexisting crusade against alcoholism and tries to shoehorn it into fixing all of society’s other problems. Lots of people are like this about a pet issue.

However it does occur to me that perhaps women take not just self defence classes but also carry weapons (pepper spray, knives, firearms) and be trained in their use. This would add protection to the individual but also would deter rapists from assault in the first place if they had a good chance of getting a knife stuck in them.

Also, to respond to a point several people have made. I don’t think joking about rape necessarily implies a cavalier attitude. Anyone in this thread who made a sarcastic response to an MRA was joking about rape. Richard Prior used to joke about racism all the time in his act. That doesn’t mean he didn’t think racism was a big deal. Quite the opposite. He joked about it because it pissed him off. A lot of comedy is like this.

GBD, you’re falling into the “most rapists are strangers” trap.
Most rape victims know their attackers. Most know them well.

Because they are significant others, friends, family members.

Y’know, the kind of people most women don’t think they have to prepare to defend themselves against. The kind of people someone who routinely carries a weapon sets it aside when they’re around, as they’re amongst friends here.

You seem to be at odds with the OP and other posters. I thought acquaintance rape was the biggest threat, not people that are known “well.”

In any case even a rapist who is known well by his victim and knows his victim both carries and knows how to use weapons is still likely to think twice before assaulting that particular person, even if they know the knife is in the coat in the hall.

Also, I can CLEARLY imagine a situation where the poor aggrieved man says, “The crazy bitch MACED me!” and she faces social section and possible criminal charges because she attacked a guy for “no good reason.”

My proposal has its risks and the legal consequences are an issue. So the maid who was (imo) assaulted by DSK may have been sacked and ended up in jail herslf for defending herself against such a powerful man. OTOH she may have been able to prevent the sexual assault, given the asshole a lesson that he can’t just fuck over anyone he wants and perhaps HE would have been too embarressed by the situation to have reported anything.

I agree that RR probably was not trying to be a sexist ass who perpetuates rape culture memes.

That doesn’t mean that that wasn’t exactly what he was doing.

Gunboat Diplomat, on the other hand, is actually a sexist ass who perpetuates rape culture memes. He did it before and he’s doing it now.

The obvious problem with arming women is that not every woman can possibly ever be armed. It’s well known that rapists target those who are vulnerable (hence the emphasis on alcohol and other drugs), not those who are hot or whatever. Encouraging women to arm themselves would simply cause rapists to shift their targeting to women, or girls (remembers that 44% of rape victims are under 18) who are unlikely to be armed for whatever reason. Such a blindingly stupid proposal could not possibly be made in good faith.

GBD – you’re making a very large presumption about the effect of an armed populace, and one that I’m not willing to stipulate. You’re asking us to stipulate than arming women would act as a deterrent for rapists. That’s assuming facts not in evidence.

That doesn’t even begin to address the other problems with your argument which others have addressed.

“Such a blindingly stupid proposal could not possibly be made in good faith.”

Quite. And anyone who doubts that only has to look at how he has responded to other criticism to be sure of that. With regards to the things women can do to keep ourselves safe from rapists,* our biggest obstacle is not lacking tools but getting punished when we use them. Whether it’s Watson getting piled on when she says “don’t do that” or a harassed girl running up against a “zero tolerance” rule at school when she physically defends herself, we are routinely punished – culturally, legally, socially – for using whatever tools we have and/or think is best.

So, anyone who suggests that what women need are more tools, especially deadly weapons, and then essentially says “so what?” when it’s pointed out how that can backfire – that person is not trying to “help” women. They are actively trying to perpetuate the rape myth that rape isn’t really rape unless the only worse alternative to the rape is death itself.

*which, again, to go back to the main point of the article, is not at all what needs to be addressed the most in any case

I’ll also point out that if women start routinely carrying weapons in order to deter rape, then rapists will start carrying them too. This is not a complicated equation.

Also: rape is about power. The rapist wants to dominate his victim. Evidence does show that rapists respond to the victim fighting back with more violence, more force.

I don’t know about other women, but I was always told (after the list of “rape prevention” tips about unattended drinks, walking alone, etc) that once you are in a man’s power, it’s best to grit your teeth and ride it out so as to not provoke more violence. The only exception is if his intention appears to be your death, in which case you don’t have anything to lose. Better you only get raped and not beaten/strangled/stabbed as well.

What RR’s problem was is that he only agreed with the mob here 99%. The mob wants 100% agreement from commenters or evisceration will take place. Also, regardless of his good intentions, he wasn’t clear and direct on some points, and was thoroughly trounced for even trying. The only thing I’ve learned from all of this is that its better to support the cause in silent solidarity then actually join the discussion, because the mob treats you like absolute shit for the tiniest missteps, regardless or your desire or intentions to make things better.

There was a time when I thought written language concrete, yes the ideas might be ephemeral, but the words and grammar used had specific meanings and specific connotations, and that meant that a sentence or paragraph had an unambiguous meaning. This was in a time where most of my communication was processed via speech, an avenue that I recognized as flawed with misunderstanding the norm. With my understanding and experiences at the time I mis-attributed the flaw to an inability to edit in real time.

As I began to converse via text I dragged that baggage with me, thinking that the words I used were clear and unambiguous while assuming that my interpretation of other’s words was correct and definitive. This lead to problems, problems very reminiscent of some of what has happened here on this thread. Gradually I noticed that often people who I had always found clear in their own written voice had radically different readings of a third parties words or, what seemed even worse (Yes, I am that self centred,) would completely miss points that I had put much effort into expressing. I may be self centred, but I also know I have some ego related problems and this tripped some warning signs for me. Maybe words aren’t so concrete, maybe written communication has more in common with speech than I thought. This has lead to me viewing online conversations a little differently, and I think far more effectively. Enough.

I have never been raped, hell I haven’t been harassed either. I didn’t grow up in a milieu of don’t do this to protect yourself, do that to keep safe, and you have to be careful all the time. I have no difficulty divorcing things that happen to me from things I have done, no one leaps to tell me that I should have been elsewhere, with other people, doing other things, wearing other clothes or the infinitude of victim blaming shit that gets directed to too many. This is my life, it’s nothing I have earned, it’s nothing that I, specifically, deserve, but it is the way that I would have everyone lead their life. That’s a tall summit to reach, but, as with everything, getting there starts here.

The life I have lead colours my perceptions, it doesn’t lend clarity, it’s just a different bias. It’s easy for me to read something that says ‘lets’ as applying to me, it is an inclusive term, but it takes effort for me to remember that it also applies to those who have not been leading my life. So when I read most of what RR has written here it’s easy for me to interpret his words as saying that culture needs to change, not that women need to change. This is easy for me because I am not used to being told at every turn that preventing rape is my responsibility, that if I get raped I will have done wrong, that having been raped I caused it.

Thing is, RR isn’t just talking to me, he is talking to people who have been told all their lives the bullshit rape apologetic lines, he is talking to people who are sick of being told they are responsible for fixing the behaviour of the predators. And considered in that light it isn’t really that hard for me to see the other message in RR’s words, the message he doesn’t want there still causes harm, it still tells women that they bear the burden, it still tells men that they have an excuse. This matters, not because of what he put there, but because of what others will pull out.

This gap can be overcome. I can talk from my perspective about the things that I can do to help decrease rape and the things I can do to help those who are survivors in their post rape life, I can encourage men to emulate the things that I do, I can discourage men from doing the things that they are still doing to make rape easier to commit and survival harder than need be. I can even confront women about the things that they do which actually make it easier for rapists to rape, be hidden in plain sight, harder to prosecute, and harder to recover from. But I had best be damn sure that any such thing has the effect I think before I start applying it to those who already bear the burden of rape culture. I had best be damn sure that how I phrase it makes it clear that I recognize that my words may cause harm, that I am open to changing them, that where I want the conversation to go comes after comfort, comes after support, comes after acknowledging the price already paid. I refuse to think that progress needs to ditch sensitivity.

I do think that RR wants to be helpful, and I would that he consider that his words here have played against themselves at least in part due to a character of insensitivity. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, it could just mean the way he has done so is flawed.

Gunboat Diplomat, on the other hand, is actually a sexist ass who perpetuates rape culture memes. He did it before and he’s doing it now.

The obvious problem with arming women is that not every woman can possibly ever be armed. It’s well known that rapists target those who are vulnerable (hence the emphasis on alcohol and other drugs), not those who are hot or whatever. Encouraging women to arm themselves would simply cause rapists to shift their targeting to women, or girls (remembers that 44% of rape victims are under 18) who are unlikely to be armed for whatever reason. Such a blindingly stupid proposal could not possibly be made in good faith.

So even you admit my proposal can actually work – at least on an individual level. Otherwise why do you say rapists would shift their targets?

I’ll also point out that if women start routinely carrying weapons in order to deter rape, then rapists will start carrying them too. This is not a complicated equation.

Many rapists don’t have to carry weapons because their relative weight and strength means they can overpower many women without them. Weapons though are a great equaliser. “God created man and woman but colonel colt made them equal” I believe the ad campaign went.
Its actually a very complicated equation. What I’m proposing is hardly a panacea but it IS a practical measure that can be taken now by anyone at risk.

@Jennygadget #734

With regards to the things women can do to keep ourselves safe from rapists,* our biggest obstacle is not lacking tools but getting punished when we use them. Whether it’s Watson getting piled on when she says “don’t do that” or a harassed girl running up against a “zero tolerance” rule at school when she physically defends herself, we are routinely punished – culturally, legally, socially – for using whatever tools we have and/or think is best.

I agree people often get victimised by the state for defending themselves. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t abrogate their right to self defence! It means the bourgeois state, its cops and its laws are shit and needs to be replaced.

So, anyone who suggests that what women need are more tools, especially deadly weapons, and then essentially says “so what?” when it’s pointed out how that can backfire – that person is not trying to “help” women. They are actively trying to perpetuate the rape myth that rape isn’t really rape unless the only worse alternative to the rape is death itself.

Eh what? I advocate armed self defence while also pointing out it can be risky and somehow I’m supporting the rapists? Thats seriously fucked up thinking.

RandomReason,
The above is what it is, I make no apologies. I do think that the discussion that you want to have is important too.

I agree with your intent. I think, however, that the majority of non-college educated men in this country would have a hell of a time understanding what you are talking about using terms like “implicit approaches to consent” and “negotiating sex play” (and many college educated as well).

How do you communicate complex ideas to people who don’t share your jargon, eh? I would start with a focus on yes means yes. I distinctly recall the ‘No means no’ program as having an impact on people when I was in university; it generated conversation about what made people safe. Something similar would work with ‘Yes means yes’, it’s catchy, fits on rather small posters in large print, the words are unambiguous and easily remembered.

Second angle, I would like to see an association in people’s heads such that ‘If you can’t talk about sex you aren’t ready.’ Yes, I recognize that most people have trouble with this, but the idea needs to get out there that if you are going to have explicit encounters you should be able to discuss them comfortably and easily at least with those you share them with. This could also dovetail well with some short films, not graphic, but illustrating that people can converse about sexuality comfortably without having to descend into tired porn clichés. I don’t think this would work as well in print as people will likely need to see and hear other people frankly discussing sex without apprehension, giggles, or embarrassment.

Third, another set of simple ads focusing on ‘how do you make sure that your partner is having a good time if you don’t ask?’ Or something like that. We need to nip the idea that pleasure is obvious, body language, expression, breathing, and vocalization run the gamut for people enjoying sex, so anyone who thinks they can just tell is making assumptions that can and frequently will misinterpret someone’s lack of desire for desire.

Fourth, divorce arousal from desire. Just because someone is wet or hard doesn’t mean they want sex with whoever is present, or even at all. This one I would prefer be approached at a scholastic level, but I acknowledge that many regions in the US at least would have a conniption.

What RR’s problem was is that he only agreed with the mob here 99%. The mob wants 100% agreement from commenters or evisceration will take place. Also, regardless of his good intentions, he wasn’t clear and direct on some points, and was thoroughly trounced for even trying. The only thing I’ve learned from all of this is that its better to support the cause in silent solidarity then actually join the discussion, because the mob treats you like absolute shit for the tiniest missteps, regardless or your desire or intentions to make things better.

The inability to distinguish between different layers of political and social conciousness is a good indicator the movement is going nowhere fast. Random Reason, me, ArguablyMRA, and the psychos who continually physcially threaten skepchick are all tarred with the same brush and are all accused of being fundamentally the same even thought theres actually a broad spectrum.
Thankfully most feminists do not wear the same blinkers so the struggle continues and things change.
Then as a quasi-marxist I’m hardly in a position to accuse anyone else of going nowhere fast.

A defining characteristic of all abusers is deflecting blame, and trying to manipulate people by casting themselves as victims.

Here is an example of the phenomenon from Amused Observer:

What RR’s problem was is that he only agreed with the mob here 99%. The mob wants 100% agreement from commenters or evisceration will take place. Also, regardless of his good intentions, he wasn’t clear and direct on some points, and was thoroughly trounced for even trying. The only thing I’ve learned from all of this is that its better to support the cause in silent solidarity then actually join the discussion, because the mob treats you like absolute shit for the tiniest missteps, regardless or your desire or intentions to make things better.

Hyperbole and denial of the facts in evidence is not indicative of having good intentions.

(This is for any lurkers, as I don’t expect logic or empathy from GD himself)

If, when discussing the full spectrum of sexual harassment and assault, women are continually saying that one of the biggest problems is that the tools we already have at our disposal are constantly being made less effective;* and then you come in – not to agree that bystanders** need to stop making our tools less effective, but instead to advocate that we need deadlier tools – then what you are essentially saying is that only the only times in which we have a right to defend ourselves are the times in which deadly force is justified. Also, you are once again placing ALL the burden of rape prevention on us. That is some seriously fucked up rape minimizing victim blaming bullshit right there.

*This is not just something that was said to GD’s proposal, it is also in the first fucking step of the advice linked to in the OP.

**I also note that GD is still cherry picking the arguements against his proposal to focus on the more extreme, when much of the push back has been rooted in examples of even lesser force getting blowback – and from people other than “cops and its laws” – from people like GD, most often.

then what you are essentially saying is that only the only times in which we have a right to defend ourselves are the times in which deadly force is justified.

I’m sorry but this thread is about rape and rape prevention. You don’t think rape IS a situation where deadly force is justified? Well we’ll have to agree to differ on that. I don’t advocate shooting someone for groping on the metro but I don’t think many people would think pepper spray to be unjustified in that situation.

Also, you are once again placing ALL the burden of rape prevention on us. That is some seriously fucked up rape minimizing victim blaming bullshit right there.

So to encourage the victims to arm and defend themselves is “rape minimising victim blaming bullshit”?
Would anyone think malcolm x’s proposals for armed self defence for black people was “rape minimising victim blaming bullshit”?
And how does advocating one single measure preclude all other measures anyway? It doesn’t.

Tethys says:
A defining characteristic of all abusers is deflecting blame, and trying to manipulate people by casting themselves as victims.

If someone walks into a room full of victims, wants to help, and gets chased out by torches and pitchforks, what do you say to that? Very sweet of you to label the people who want to help as abusers. There are real problems. No single solution is going to make it better. Some people are going to have ideas that you don’t agree with. Some are going to present an idea in a way that makes you feel attacked. That doesn’t change the fact that people do want to help you, and you are pushing them away. People who support your cause in silent solidarity aren’t victims, and I’m not trying to be a vicitm. Whenever or not you feel it necessary to do more to encourage those who want to help you is entirely up to you.

Also: rape is about power. The rapist wants to dominate his victim. Evidence does show that rapists respond to the victim fighting back with more violence, more force.

I don’t know about other women, but I was always told (after the list of “rape prevention” tips about unattended drinks, walking alone, etc) that once you are in a man’s power, it’s best to grit your teeth and ride it out so as to not provoke more violence. The only exception is if his intention appears to be your death, in which case you don’t have anything to lose. Better you only get raped and not beaten/strangled/stabbed as well.

It depends what attitude you want to take. Tying to flee and failing that submitting to assaults such as rape in the hope they won’t kill you can be a valid survival strategy but its hardly ideal.

Most people would want to fight and my point is if you do want to fight you’re in a much better position with a weapon.

If you have a weapon and the other person doesn’t it is YOU who have the power. Even if your attacker does have a weapon you’re still on better terms than if neither of you had one in most cases though becuase of the average size/strength differences between men and women.

One is that violent crime in general has declined. The idea that criminally-minded men would drastically reduce the number of armed robberies, assaults and murders they commit while raping the same amount is counter-intuitive. Granted, it is possible, but I don’t think it can be assumed.

Random Reason, me, ArguablyMRA, and the psychos who continually physcially threaten skepchick are all tarred with the same brush and are all accused of being fundamentally the same even thought theres actually a broad spectrum.

The WHOLE SPECTRUM deserves to be tarred, even if one end is much worse than the other.

And you are indeed fundamentally the same, in the same manner as a pebble and a boulder are fundamentally the same.

And just as a boulder can be made from many pebbles piled and bound together, it is the mass of people like you who create, support, and enable the few psychos to do the damage that they do.

What RR’s problem was is that he only agreed with the mob here 99%. The mob wants 100% agreement from commenters or evisceration will take place.

And yet, despite the notable alleged loss of life-supporting entrails, he is still free and able to continue to post and argue as much as he wants.

There was another poster, a while back, who, on a different topic, came out in that supposed 1%, and received the same alleged evisceration. He stayed and debated in good faith, acknowledged valid arguments made against his positions, altered or abandoned those tenets he could not logically sustain against the criticism, and stuck to his guns on those he could. He was even threatened with being banned.

He eventually won a Molly for his efforts, and is now a valued and respected member of the “Horde”.

Thing is, RR isn’t just talking to me, he is talking to people who have been told all their lives the bullshit rape apologetic lines, he is talking to people who are sick of being told they are responsible for fixing the behaviour of the predators. And considered in that light it isn’t really that hard for me to see the other message in RR’s words, the message he doesn’t want there still causes harm, it still tells women that they bear the burden, it still tells men that they have an excuse. This matters, not because of what he put there, but because of what others will pull out.

And for this as well:

But I had best be damn sure that any such thing has the effect I think before I start applying it to those who already bear the burden of rape culture.

I can see where some of what RR said was an attempt to understand, but he dismissed (or failed to integrate) part of the problem: women have carried this burden on their own for millennia.

The answer isn’t to expect more of women…the answer is to expect something more than empty platitudes from men.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a misogynist ass who wants to maintain the status quo.

Yeah, seeing how well the private arms race works in the USA, together with a fucked-up wild-west hero culture, that would be totally the way I’d like things to go…
I want my daughters to be able to walk the streets at night, not to end up death or killing somebody

Oh, and I think that RR’s problem with the alcohol is that he confuses the means with the reason. Alcohol is the tool rapists use, nit the reason why they become rapists in the first place.
I’ve been in many typical situations where acquaintance rape happens: blackout drunk, accepting rides from people I hardly knew, sleeping on couches of people I didn’t know well or even sharing a bed with some guy because we both accepted an offer to stay at a friend’s house, or taking a shower in a community shower together with guys. I never made even a bad experience, let alone was assaulted. That had nothing to do with the situation, but with the guys not being rapists.

What RR’s problem was is that he only agreed with the mob here 99%. The mob wants 100% agreement from commenters or evisceration will take place.

The only thing I’ve learned from all of this is that its better to support the cause in silent solidarity then actually join the discussion, because the mob treats you like absolute shit for the tiniest missteps, regardless or your desire or intentions to make things better.

There are spaces where that’s pretty consistently true, and there are times when Pharyngula threads veer strongly enough in this direction to turn my stomach (and a minority of commenters who seem to be genuinely unaware that there’s any other way to interact with people, some of whom have a disturbingly poor sense of boundaries). However, it’s lazy thinking at best to simply assume that’s what’s happening here. RandomReason has had the reason his stance provokes ire explained to him repeatedly, and has basically refused to engage with it beyond “no I’m not doing that.” Without pausing to consider that he may actually be.

The obvious problem with arming women is that not every woman can possibly ever be armed. It’s well known that rapists target those who are vulnerable (hence the emphasis on alcohol and other drugs), not those who are hot or whatever. Encouraging women to arm themselves would simply cause rapists to shift their targeting to women, or girls (remembers that 44% of rape victims are under 18) who are unlikely to be armed for whatever reason. Such a blindingly stupid proposal could not possibly be made in good faith.

So even you admit my proposal can actually work – at least on an individual level. Otherwise why do you say rapists would shift their targets?

If there were any effect from your proposal, it would be that fewer able-bodied, neurotypical adult women were raped, while more cognitively disabled women were raped, more physically disabled women were raped, more elderly women were raped, and more children were raped.

In fact, it is already the case that disabled women and children are more at risk of sexual violence than able-bodied, neurotypical adult women. This is part of the problem of rape culture that we are trying to solve. You are intelligent enough to understand this, but you don’t care because you are a disgusting, rapey misogynist who views women as inanimate objects, cumdumpsters, broken mugs. You are the problem. So don’t come in here telling us what the problem with “the movement” is. The problem is you.

GBD,
You’re again ignoring the facts. The primary weapon of rapists is social pressure and coercion. A weapon is not only useless in this situation, but rapists have a known tendency to offer MORE FORCE in response to resistance.

You are falling into the trap of assuming that the primary weapon of rapists is overt force. Most don’t use ANY. Instead, they use so-called “soft” weapons, like threats, coercion, and our old friend, “persistence.” Most rapes do not happen after a standoff, armed or not. They happen after the rapist pushes past the objections of a woman and has sex with her even after she’s said she doesn’t want it.

In most rapes, the only violence is the rape itself.

Introducing a weapon into this situation is USELESS and likely to result in the victim getting injured further.

Most people would want to fight.

No shit.

Most women – if my own experience and conversations with other women are any clue – are told that once their resistance is overcome, continuing to fight is not only futile, it will get them hurt worse. They are told that for their own good, they should STOP FIGHTING.

Do you not GET THIS?!

Arming the women might enable some women to escape a rapey situation, yes. Not disagreeing with you. But it is not going to work for most women, in most situations, minus a lot of social changes.

A better social change is getting rapists to stop raping.

Tying to flee and failing that submitting to assaults such as rape in the hope they won’t kill you can be a valid survival strategy but its hardly ideal.

No it’s not ideal. Of course it fucking isn’t.

You seem to be missing that tossing more rules on women to follow isn’t going to stop rape. It won’t. Women could be given and trained in the use of government-issued bazookas that fire katanas and rape would still happen.

Rape will stop happening when rapists stop raping. Stop trying to shift to focus away from the perpetrator. Focus on the rapists and get them to stop.

In a way, this is the worst part for me. As if having it happen wasn’t bad enough, there’s now living with the knowledge that that sick fucking pig has fundamentally changed who I am. I will definitely never be the magnanimous extrovert I once was again. I hate myself for that, admittedly. Should be stronger than that.

++

So even you admit my proposal can actually work – at least on an individual level. Otherwise why do you say rapists would shift their targets?

Learn to read, rape-apologist. Your “arm yourselves, bitches” approach solves exactly nothing and amps up the victim-blaming. BECAUSE: IF A WOMAN IS NOT ARMED AND IS THEN RAPED, WORTHLESS SHITSTAINS LIKE YOU THEN SAY, “WELL, SHE WASN’T ARMED (and therefore, she deserved it). If a woman is physically unable to use a weapon, if she can’t afford one, if she can’t afford the classes, etc., etc., what then? Bitch is out of luck?

<blockquoteIf you have a weapon and the other person doesn’t it is YOU who have the power.

Congratulations! You are today’s Most Painfully Stupid Troll! With all your blathering about the size difference between men and women, has it not occurred to your three arguing brain cells how quickly and easily a weapon can be turned against its owner?

“These bitches don’t want to pack heat – a plan that I proposed. Can we finally all agree now that it’s their fault?”

GD isn’t the only idiot to bring this up and argue it. One asshole arguing for women packing a loaded gun got pissed off at me enough to track down my e-mail address and harass me about it.

Weapons are not the answer. First of all, unless you are highly trained in the use of whatever weapon you might carry, chances are very high it will be used against you. Most people are very hesitant to kill, it doesn’t come naturally. Such hesitations will generally end up with you being dead.

In order to use a weapon successfully, you need foundational training in self-defense, the most important bit being that you are able to stay calm, keep a clear head and constantly assess your situation.

I could go on and on and on about this, but the whole subject of weapons is so damn stupid, especially in a thread about changing social attitudes and culture. In no way does wandering around with a weapon help to change rape culture, unless you’re talking about making it worse.

Also, to add to what Giliell said, supra: the majority of rapes and assaults are not stranger rapes, where a weapon might be useful. Even in my own case, a weapon wouldn’t have helped – I never would have had a chance to get at it, being hit from behind and finding myself bound when I regained consciousness.

I have noticed a fairly consistent theme on this therad, and on others: women are told to arm themselves, not get drunk, have their older brother accompany them, not do this, do that. Which would make sense if, and only if, women were the perpetrators (yes, I know that there are rare cases in which women rape men or women so don’t even fucking go there!). But they are not. They are the victims. Generally, they are the victims of men. Men who choose to rape women (some refuse to call it rape: “I didn’t rape her, she was shitfaced.”).

Take a look at the suggestions in the original post. All four suggestions for reducing the prevalence of rape involve requiring men to be aware, to listen, to monitor, and to change. Ending all rape may be impossible. Reducing rape is very doable. And it requires me, and every other man out there who is aware of all the different gradations of rape, who is aware of predators, who is aware of the culture of rape, to actually make this unnacceptable behaviour. As has happened to drunk driving. The culture can shift. But arming women, or telling women what they should or should not do to not be raped is bullshit.

And it requires me, and every other man out there who is aware of all the different gradations of rape, who is aware of predators, who is aware of the culture of rape, to actually make this unnacceptable behaviour. As has happened to drunk driving. The culture can shift. But arming women, or telling women what they should or should not do to not be raped is bullshit.

This has been another post from the annoying Captain Obvious. Sorry.

Don’t be sorry. It seems there is a great need for Captain Obvious. When you look at asspimples like GBD, he will say anything, no matter how stupid to avoid doing the simple things you outlined above. Anything but that! The horror! You mean I, mighty man, must…listen?! Quelle horror, no, no, no, can’t do that. Can’t you bitches just arm yourselves?

I have noticed a fairly consistent theme on this therad, and on others: women are told to arm themselves, not get drunk, have their older brother accompany them, not do this, do that…

Take a look at the suggestions in the original post. All four suggestions for reducing the prevalence of rape involve requiring men to be aware, to listen, to monitor, and to change. Ending all rape may be impossible. Reducing rape is very doable. And it requires me, and every other man out there who is aware of all the different gradations of rape, who is aware of predators, who is aware of the culture of rape, to actually make this unnacceptable behaviour. As has happened to drunk driving. The culture can shift. But arming women, or telling women what they should or should not do to not be raped is bullshit.

QFT. Indeed, the whole point of the original post was that the old “rape prevention” tricks, as taught to women, thereby making them responsible for their rapes, are NOT WORKING. They don’t work because they ignore the reality of who rapes, and why, and how. That’s why we need better data, and better strategies that are informed by that new data.

People who come in offering up the same old stale bullshit are demonstrating that they are, on some level at least, totally okay with the status quo. Otherwise they wouldn’t be deliberately ignoring these helpful new suggestions in favor of the old, proven to be ineffective old “strategies.”

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you may be commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

These tips are just as effective as the “tips” about women arming themselves and becoming teetotalers. Maybe more so, just because of the novelty of the idea of holding rapists, rather than their victims, responsible for their crimes.

Take a look at the suggestions in the original post. All four suggestions for reducing the prevalence of rape involve requiring men to be aware, to listen, to monitor, and to change.

And that would be why the slimepit disgorged its vomitous contents upon this blog. We can’t have teh menz expected to lift a finger to do anything! They might chip a nail or wind up accidentally doing something even MORE dreadful: helping women.

I’ve been lurking in this thread and just wanted to chime in with a small point.

I find that the best way to arm myself against sexual harassment, and what makes me feel safest when walking home alone, is to be a 6-foot-tall person wearing loose men’s clothing, especially with a hoodie and a beanie. The more that I look like a big, burly dude to the casual observer, the safer I feel.

I think the reasons for that are pretty obvious. Men don’t get raped or harassed anywhere NEAR as often as women. And the subtle dudely cues I give off mean that out at bars or at parties I’m much less likely to be hit on, which I personally consider to be a good thing, since it means I don’t have to worry about turning people down.

There’s an argument for you: Hey straight men, if you want more women to dress in attractive, revealing clothing, then get rid of the rapists that make women afraid to dress like that. Oh and also get rid of the fucking catcallers, who can seriously all go sit on a pile of typhoid-infected rotting porcupines.

And that’s another behavior that men should be policing themselves – speak up and tell your buddies that yelling shit at women who are just walking along, minding their own business, is fucking rude and they need to cut that shit out. ESPECIALLY telling random women to smile.

GBD’s insistence that the solution to rape lies with women and that men have no role here make’s me wonder if he’s protesting a bit too hard.
And I HATE thinking shit like that – and it’s not for GBD’s sake that I hate it.

I hear you. Hate thinking that way too, but honestly, whenever one of these douchebombs comes in with his “is it rape if this happens? How about now?” game it becomes harder and harder not to think that he’s simply trying to figure out how much he can get away with before it becomes “rape-rape”.

I’d like to day that GBD is merely a privileged-blinded faux ally. He has literally no idea what he’s talking about, and definitely can’t even begin to put himself in the shoes of women. And he definitely doesn’t listen to what women are telling him. That’s typical bigot behavior.

But, after everything I’ve seen from that dude, let’s just say he waves several red flags.

lol too right. I got this one yesterday morning. Had the worst fucking headache I’ve had in years, so the mood was not exactly cheerful. Some dirty scumbag and his buddy were walking towards me on the sidewalk. They parted so they could flank me as I went by and dirty scumbag said “good morning”. I responded in kind. But, I didn’t smile like a good performing grinder monkey, so he followed it up with a nasty “gee, isn’t it so nice when people SMILE IN THE MORNING”.

There’s an argument for you: Hey straight men, if you want more women to dress in attractive, revealing clothing, then get rid of the rapists that make women afraid to dress like that. Oh and also get rid of the fucking catcallers, who can seriously all go sit on a pile of typhoid-infected rotting porcupines.

While there’s some truth to that, I’d rather not rely on “eye-candy” arguments to gain other people’s assistance.

Not necessarily: I’ve seen proponents of the use of weapons going all über-feminists, claiming that lack of weapon is not womens’ fault but “the fault of a culture that pigeonhole women in a passive role, teaches girls that peacefulness and diplomacy are virtues while telling boys that those are signs of weakness and that righteous anger is the most virtuous behavior, yada yada yada yada, if rapists were more often killed, crippled, tortured to death with the video of their agony uploaded on youtube, then their self-preservation instincts would stop them from attempting rape“.
So this kind of attitude is not always a coded message of victim blaming: there are times were it appears to be more akin to the arguments in favor of the death penalty and a “tough” penal system: based on the demonstratly false (but oh so hard to kill) idea that fear of death and fear of pain are the most efficient ways to dissuade people from turning to crime.

They might chip a nail or wind up accidentally doing something even MORE dreadful: helping women.

It’s more dire than that. They might actually have to see women as actual, full human beings. Of course, to Hoggle and crew, seeing women as full human beings and equals is the ability to say “if I were a girl, I’d kick you in the cunt” and not have the recipient get upset, ’cause if she really thought she was an equal, she wouldn’t get upset, ya know? Why can’t you bitches just be one of the guys?

While there’s some truth to that, I’d rather not rely on “eye-candy” arguments to gain other people’s assistance.

Yeah, it’s not a great argument, but sometimes it can help certain people realize that “hey getting rid of sexual harassment actually affects my life, too, and in a positive way!” It’s like the first tiny step in curing someone of douchiness.

But you’re totally right about not relying on it. It doesn’t really solve the problem of objectification at all, which is a major flaw of the argument, and why I’d only look at it as a first step for the especially thick.

People who come in offering up the same old stale bullshit are demonstrating that they are, on some level at least, totally okay with the status quo.

This is made even more evident when they begin entering the conversation by leaving comments that clearly disagree with the original post, yet can’t be bothered to actually admit that they do and craft their comment/argument accordingly. So that, instead of engaging in direct discourse, they start out by pontificating and passing out advice from on high. And then only address other people directly later on in an attempt to play “gotcha!”

Hate thinking that way too, but honestly, whenever one of these douchebombs comes in with his “is it rape if this happens? How about now?” game it becomes harder and harder not to think that he’s simply trying to figure out how much he can get away with before it becomes “rape-rape”.

I suspect that it’s more of an on-going thing. It’s not just about getting away with future acts, it’s also about justifying what they may have done in the past.

I’m also guessing that a significant number of these kinds of trolls are not members of the serial rapists club themselves, but rather serial and occasional harassers and the like who are trying very hard not to examine their own behavior. They appear very invested in determining where those lines are drawn, but I think maybe not because of rape specifically but because: if what that guy did was understandable and makes him nothing than an Average Guy…well then, they themselves must be a really Nice Guy by comparison, yes? Especially the ones like GD that focus so much on offering “helpful” advice and talking about stranger rape when everyone is talking about the other, more common kind.

@ Colin. That’s not fair. Saying rape is rarer than it was in 1970 is not the same as saying it’s rare in any absolute sense.

that’s not what he said though; he said that he wanted it to be rarer than it already is. There’s no way by which that doesn’t imply that it’s already rare. I know he afterwards kept on saying that’s not what he said (not that that wasn’t what he meant, which at least would have been honest), but people obviously couldn’t have known what he meant to say when he said that rape is already rare.

He is very clumsy with language, and then gets upset when people don’t read what he writes the way he wishes to be read. It’s frustrating and it impedes clear communication.

Saying women can better protect themselves from rape if they are taught a more realistic picture of how it happens may show an incorrect understanding of what it is women are taught, but it does not equate to arguing that if a woman gets raped it’s her fault for not protecting herself better.

no, it means that the intent for blaming the victim is absent, not that this rhetoric (and any actions that might follow from it), won’t result in victim-blaming. Besides, how does one teach women to protect themselves against being raped by their husbands and boyfriends? Think about this for a moment, please.

Arguing that rape is less common than it used to be and we should look at the reasons to determine how to best continue this trend is wrong if rape has not actually declined, but not the same as arguing rape is going away on its own, so we don’t need to worry about it.

I don’t remember anyone claiming that that’s what RR was saying.

However it does occur to me that perhaps women take not just self defence classes but also carry weapons (pepper spray, knives, firearms) and be trained in their use. This would add protection to the individual but also would deter rapists from assault in the first place if they had a good chance of getting a knife stuck in them.

bullshit. it wouldn’t add “protection”, it would (in addition to the (attempted) rape)get them hauled off to jail for years for attacking an “innocent” man.

The rapists are ultimately responsible for rape, but if we sit around and wait for rapists to stop rape, it isn’t going to happen.

no one is “sitting around”. did you read PZ’s post? The point is to enlist men in making sure their friends don’t rape and they’re not friends with rapists.

What others are missing is they’re taking comments about what women can do to stop the rape culture

huh? None of the things RR suggested were ones to stop rape culture, they were things to remove the circumstances in which rape culture is most likely to lead to rapes. He was dealing with symptoms for the most part, not with the cause.

there’s a difference between jokes in which rape is the punchline and jokes that are black humor meant to critique rape culture. The former actually encourages rapists (I’m too lazy to dig up the citation for that right now, ask me again later)

I thought acquaintance rape was the biggest threat, not people that are known “well.”

Don’t argue about terms you don’t understand. The distinction is between stranger rape and acquaintance rape; being raped by your husband of 20 years is an acquaintance rape.

In any case even a rapist who is known well by his victim and knows his victim both carries and knows how to use weapons is still likely to think twice before assaulting that particular person, even if they know the knife is in the coat in the hall.

you know many people who sleep with a gun under their pillow and are willing to blow their lover’s head off right after waking up?
Also, do you even understand that many such rapists don’t think they’re committing a rape, and thus wouldn’t expect to have their head blown off for doing it?
And lastly, every household is full of kitchen knifes, and that somehow doesn’t stop domestic assault, so obviously abusive husbands aren’t too worried about knifes in the house that their wife knows how to use.

OTOH she may have been able to prevent the sexual assault, given the asshole a lesson that he can’t just fuck over anyone he wants and perhaps HE would have been too embarressed by the situation to have reported anything.

you’re clueless.

So even you admit my proposal can actually work – at least on an individual level. Otherwise why do you say rapists would shift their targets?

shifting rape onto other women is a clue to how your proposal would in fact NOT work. Pay attention for once.

It means the bourgeois state, its cops and its laws are shit and needs to be replaced.

if your suggestion is to “replace” those who are responsible for blaming women for defending themselves, you’re going to have to “replace” the vast majority of humankind of all classes.
Not all problems can be reduced to class-inequality, you myopic moron.

Oh fuck off, would you? In this thread, in this context, that is not what was going on and you very well know it […] Do not be defending such crap.

Since you obviously realized that I was not talking about Gunboat Diplomat’s position, you could follow this thought toward the logical conclusion that I was not defending Gunboat Diplomat’s crap since I was talking about something else

Besides, since when does the fact that some people use the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate to indulge in victim blaming makes it forbiden to remind people that the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate is wrong even when it is not used to blame victims?

Besides, since when does the fact that some people use the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate to indulge in victim blaming makes it forbiden to remind people that the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate is wrong even when it is not used to blame victims?

it isn’t. you are however getting confused in intent-issues again. it’s irrelevant whether this tactic is meant to blame victims; it does so anyway.

it isn’t. you are however getting confused in intent-issues again. it’s irrelevant whether this tactic is meant to blame victims; it does so anyway.

It is very relevant and important: meatspace is filled with people who have a feminist mindset yet believe in the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate. Since they think that their contempt of rapist is so obvious that accusing them of victim blaming can only be done in bad faith, they will be quick to conclude that you are a fraud. And good look trying to get your point across if your audience is already convinced that you are a charlatan.

I have noticed a fairly consistent theme on this therad, and on others: women are told to arm themselves, not get drunk, have their older brother accompany them, not do this, do that…

Recently, someone linked to an article about a woman in the NYC subway snapping a photo of the man who groped her, which included the photo*. The comments section had an annoyingly high contingent of male and female commenters chiding her for taking the photo, saying that she should have [insert some clearly fantasizing act of violence here]’ed him instead.

* Was slightly surprised that this was news, I thought that was the whole bread and butter of web sites like Hollaback, but hey.

1) there could not possibly be any other reasonable answer besides “of course deadly force is always justified when it comes to [potential] rape!”

and

2) As if there hadn’t already been several people (other than me) pointing out that they think there are many reasonable answers to that question.

(again, this is for the lurkers, because while I don’t expect GD to engage in honest debate, I can see how living in a culture of rape – and rape myths about strangers in bushes – makes it harder to work through the logic here…)

Let’s say…I’m fooling around with my new boyfriend one night, or hey – maybe even my old boyfriend, fiance, husband or just someone I met that night. Let’s say we start going farther than I want to and he doesn’t care.

We’ll put aside for the moment how how logistically un-useful the gun that’s in my purse by the door is to me at the moment. We will pretend I can say “accio gun!” at any time and viola! it’s right where I need it to be: in my hand.

We will also put aside for the moment that he, likely being stronger than I, has more than a halfway decent chance of wrestling the gun away from me – unless I am willing to shoot without giving the matter much thought. We’ll pretend I already spent the time pondering what choice I want to make before I used my Jedi skills to get my hands on the gun that was not within reach. So, no hesitation on my part from this point on.

We will further put aside the question of what happens after I kill him. Of the possibility of jail time which, aside from being jail, brings with it even more threats of sexual assault. We will ignore for the moment the fact that “what should be” is not always “what is”, and that in practical terms it is the “what is” that that we must navigate through when determining how best to defend ourselves from rape.

What we won’t put aside is the fact that making the choice to point the gun at him is not arguably different from shooting him, not from the perspective of the potential victim. One may hope that a threat is all that it takes, but one cannot be certain. Also, accidents happen. If you pull a gun on someone, you need to be ready for the possibility that they – or someone else – will end up dead. Which means that I am not only choosing to pull the gun on a potential rapist, I also am choosing to kill someone who may be seriously and criminally flawed, but who also may be someone I like or even love.

So, your question to me is, don’t I feel shooting him would be justified?

Well, that’s a complicated question.

If it’s someone other than me that is the potential victim? I can’t say that I would argue they should do otherwise. I would be very resistant to any kind of criminal charges brought against the potential victim. Despite her life not being specifically threatened, it seems a pretty clear case of self-defense to me.

If I was the potential victim though? That’s a different story. Perhaps I am just too nice, too soft, too much of a humanist, too empathetic, but….if the choice was between me being raped and my assailant – my date, my fiance, my husband, my friend – being dead? No, I can’t say that I would always choose their death. Especially if I think it’s very likely that they have no thoughts of killing me afterwards. I would want us both to live, even if it meant I would be hurt and they would be effectively dead to me afterwards.

I’m hardly alone in feeling this way either, and just as I would not presume to wag my finger at someone who choose differently than I believe I would,* I would hardly shake my head at someone who would choose the same.

And I think it makes you a pretty fucking spectacularly massive asshole to, essentially, act all appalled at this kind of opinion.

So, my answer to:

“You don’t think rape IS a situation where deadly force is justified?”

Is that the question you are asking doesn’t even make sense, because rape is not a one-size-fits-all scenario.

Even less one-size-fits-all are rape threats, which is what you are effectively asking about, despite trying to frame it to sound otherwise. Because no, I’m not going to go so far as to pretend that I can use my Jedi mind trick to stop a rape in progress, say “accio! gun,” and then shoot the guy.

*[For the record, to a certain extent I *did* choose this. Although the situation was harassment, not rape, and the punishment I was choosing for him to avoid was much less harsh than death – the perp was someone I loved – and still love – very much. And I chose to stay silent for a long time partly in an effort to protect him. And while I regret my silence, I would like to point out that the false ideas that all perps are monsters and deserve severe – rather than just – punishment contributed to my silence. This idea that sexual violence is always extreme and never perpetrated by regular guys (who certainly don’t deserve death for simply being assholes) – this left my younger self both without a way to articulate to others what was happening and very afraid of how people I loved may be hurt if I did so. So this shit that you are pulling? It’s not just annoying – it makes girls and women less safe. But then, I suspect you already knew that and either don’t care or consider it to be a feature, not a bug.]

a) it is reasonable to suppose that women are more likely to report being raped today than they were in the 70’s and 80’s.

b) until 1975, no state in the US considered marital rape a crime, and it took until 1993 for the last of the 50 states to criminalize it, so most of those rapes were not included in the reported crimes for the first half of the trend chart.

Regardless of methodological critiques of the survey, the methodology was consistent (indeed, the one year the methodology was different, 2006, that years’ data was excluded from the report).
As with all studies from reputable, the methodology is transparently and freely provided for review.

Thus, even if the survey consistently underreports rapes by 10%, or 30%, or 50%, – or 2,000% – the fact remains that the trend shows an 80% reduction in what the survey *does* cover – reported rapes.

(BTW, The UK uses very different measures than ours, and yet the data there, too, shows an equally dramatic decrease in reported rapes over the past 30 years.)

These statistics do allow for an unambiguous assertion:

Reported rapes in the US fell by 80% over the past 30 years, and the trend is continuing.

It also allows a reasonable conclusion:

Since factors discouraging reporting have declines over the years, it is likely that unreported rapes have also declined by a significant percentage.

Does that mean rape is not terrible? No. Does that mean rape is not much to frequent? No. Does that mean we should be complacent, and just assume the problem will take care of itself? Hell no, the decline thus far didn’t happen on its own.

It does mean that some factors over the past 30 years contributed more than others to a decline in rapes. Those are worth understanding. Contrary to what seems to be assumed here, those factors are not yet well understood, and deserve greater attention and study.

It also means that the insistence that nothing has changed is not supported by the data, no matter how loudly and repeatedly it is insisted.

Insisting otherwise is like an older saying, in all sincerity, how much better things were in the “good old days”. It is a mistaken impression resulting from imperfections in individual human memory and weighing of risk and probability.

The data provides useful information about a notable, and surprising, trend – a trend that conflicts with many beliefs, assumptions and impressions, as empirical data often does. One can choose to accept reality and learn from it, even if it does not support one’s arguments, or one can choose to deny and ignore it, like creationists and Chopralites do. The data doesn’t care, nor does reality.

I strongly support gun control, and would like to think that the increased prevalence of guns in the US has increased gun violence and reduced the risk of me being shot by people with guns. I used to argue that point quite strongly, because it appealed to me intuitively. When what I consider gun nuts threw stats at me from their favorite advocacy site, I would through stats from mine, and argue that their stats significantly undercount gun violence. While that was true, it did not address the statistical trends over time – which, I eventually concluded, did NOT support my assertion.

In fact,there has been a continuing decline in violent crime in the US over the past 30 years, even including the past 4 years when there was a dramatic uptick in gun ownership. So, I no longer make my argument for gun control – which I still advocate – on those grounds.

If you do not believe the data, provide evidence refuting the data. Attacking me or my character does not invalidate the USBoJ data. It has no bearing on it whatsoever.

The primary difference between faith and science is that the former ignores the facts and confuses passion for veracity, while the latter is led by the facts and continues to learn and draw new conclusions as a consequence.

2)
#707 Colin,

At 564 RandomReason longs for a time “…where rapes are much rarer than they already are.”

But at 580 “RandomReason” declares absolutely that he never said rape was rare.

You are making a logical error. A thing can, in fact, be much rarer today than in the past, and still not be considered rare. It can even be rarer in the future than it is today, and still not be considered rare. There is no contradiction between the two.

in any case, “rare” is a fuzzy, subjective term. It is also irrelevant for this discussion, as, no matter how rare or prevalent rape still is, it is too prevalent and must be reduced.

You and too many others here seem to think that, to discredit a claim, all you need to do is label the claimant with a pejorative label and discredit them by association. That is shoddy thinking.

It is very relevant and important: meatspace is filled with people who have a feminist mindset yet believe in the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate. Since they think that their contempt of rapist is so obvious that accusing them of victim blaming can only be done in bad faith, they will be quick to conclude that you are a fraud. And good look trying to get your point across if your audience is already convinced that you are a charlatan.

that’s a question of method: whether it’s ok to lie to someone (i.e. not inform them that what they’re saying contributes to victim-blaming) to not turn them off. Now, I find it a thoroughly useless concept to not hold supposed allies accountable, but again, that’s a discussion of methods of talking to people who voice such opinions.

But I was not discussing methods.
And judging from this post, neither were you, at fist:

Not necessarily: I’ve seen proponents of the use of weapons going all über-feminists, claiming that lack of weapon is not womens’ fault but “the fault of a culture that pigeonhole women in a passive role, teaches girls that peacefulness and diplomacy are virtues while telling boys that those are signs of weakness and that righteous anger is the most virtuous behavior, yada yada yada yada, if rapists were more often killed, crippled, tortured to death with the video of their agony uploaded on youtube, then their self-preservation instincts would stop them from attempting rape“.
So this kind of attitude is not always a coded message of victim blaming: there are times were it appears to be more akin to the arguments in favor of the death penalty and a “tough” penal system: based on the demonstratly false (but oh so hard to kill) idea that fear of death and fear of pain are the most efficient ways to dissuade people from turning to crime.

that doesn’t look like a discussion of how to talk to people who do victim-blaming on purpose vs. those who don’t do it on purpose. it looks like drawing a distinction on effects based on intent, since it was a response to someone saying that that rhetoric effects victim-blaming.

Just to address two glaring statistical fallacies that are (largely) uncritically accepted here:

evidence for people claiming there’s MORE rape now than there used to be would be helpful, before you go ahead making such accusations.

Once again, for the slow of comprehension: people are not criticizing you for saying that there’s fewer rapes; people are criticizing you for the phrasing you used which said that such crimes had been reduced to “rare”, by saying that you wish them to be even more rare than they already are.

It also means that the insistence that nothing has changed is not supported by the data, no matter how loudly and repeatedly it is insisted.

quote or it didn’t happen.

<blockquoteYou are making a logical error. A thing can, in fact, be much rarer today than in the past, and still not be considered rare. you are once again failing at comprehending the words you use.

you did not say “rarer than they are today”; you said “rarer than they already are”. these actually mean different things. English; you’re not very good with it.

You and too many others here seem to think that, to discredit a claim, all you need to do is label the claimant with a pejorative label and discredit them by association. That is shoddy thinking.

Just to address two glaring statistical fallacies that are (largely) uncritically accepted here:

evidence for people claiming there’s MORE rape now than there used to be would be helpful, before you go ahead making such accusations.

Once again, for the slow of comprehension: people are not criticizing you for saying that there’s fewer rapes; people are criticizing you for the phrasing you used which said that such crimes had been reduced to “rare”, by saying that you wish them to be even more rare than they already are.

It also means that the insistence that nothing has changed is not supported by the data, no matter how loudly and repeatedly it is insisted.

quote or it didn’t happen.

You are making a logical error. A thing can, in fact, be much rarer today than in the past, and still not be considered rare.

you are once again failing at comprehending the words you use.

you did not say “rarer than they are today”; you said “rarer than they already are”. these actually mean different things. English; you’re not very good with it.

You and too many others here seem to think that, to discredit a claim, all you need to do is label the claimant with a pejorative label and discredit them by association. That is shoddy thinking.

huh? None of the things RR suggested were ones to stop rape culture, they were things to remove the circumstances in which rape culture is most likely to lead to rapes. He was dealing with symptoms for the most part, not with the cause.

He was pretty explicit about this. See 587 & 608 for instance. He seems to think binge drinking is the cause of rape culture, when it’s actually another symptom of the same societal problems, but he did think he was dealing with the cause.

–That people claim rape is more common or equally common now than it used to be in the 70′s

Esteleth basically said this in 533. That if the numbers have declined, it isn’t by much. That’s what he was responding to.

–That I have refused to engage in the conversation about the topic of eliminating the cult of drunkenness and the topic of how to improve pre-sex communication

–That I have attacked RR for bringing up those two topics

I can see how he perceived that. He was trying to talk about ways to prevent rape. Other people said that his suggestion amounted to victim blaming. He denied this interpretation of his proposal and said saying rapists are to blame for rape doesn’t actually stop it. Going back over the thread, though, he was doing the same thing he (rightly) perceived was being done to him and holding you responsible for arguments made by others on your “team.” You do seem to have reasonably engaged his arguments without jumping to conclusions about his character.

adjectives come in three forms: the basic form, the comparative, and the superlative.

the comparative is called that for a reason. it compares. but it can do so in many ways, either in purely relative terms, or in terms of already having something, and then having more of that something. Usually, one of the pair of comparative words is left out, because it’s meant to be read from context. This is a part that English speakers, when they’re sloppy with the language, tend to fuck up.

Example:

I will be faster than today
I will be faster than I already am

The former compares times. And states is a purely relative comparison between those two times.
The latter compares two compound verbs, and compares an already existing state of fastness to a state of even greater fastness. Here’s how the sentences look with their full comparison sets:

I will be faster [tomorrow] than today
I will be faster than I already am [fast]

So you cannot say “it will be [x]-er than it already is” without saying that something is already [x], just not as [x] as it will be in the future.

Conclusion:

RR did say rape was rare. But because he’s sloppy with English, he didn’t mean to say it and still apparently can’t wrap his head around the fact that he did.

He was pretty explicit about this. See 587 & 608 for instance. He seems to think binge drinking is the cause of rape culture, when it’s actually another symptom of the same societal problems, but he did think he was dealing with the cause.

and he had it pointed out to him that he’s wrong about this. what did you want to happen, instead?

and again, we’re arguing intent. RR was not addressing the cause of rape culture. He might have meant to, but that’s a bit irrelevant, since he didn’t in fact do so.

Esteleth basically said this in 533. That if the numbers have declined, it isn’t by much. That’s what he was responding to.

I did not read that comment to mean rape is more common or the same as in the 70’s. However, a single comment with that position is not the same as: “loudly and repeatedly insisted”.

This is key and it’s where a lot of men get derailed, I think. It used to be that rape simply wasn’t discussed, ever. If it was, it was done in a round about way, using many a euphemism. Victim blaming and shaming is deeply rooted, even today, many women don’t speak about being raped or assaulted or find ways to rationalize it away.

It’s a recent development, women reporting rapes and assaults, being willing to talk about such crimes, being willing to talk about harassment and so forth.

Yep, and we need to keep informing them of the fact that they’re wrong and that it’s just another way to blame victims for acts of violence that are perpetrated against them.

The problem is that people who believe in the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate believe that arming women will make them safer by giving them a fighting chance against a rapist and by scaring would-be rapists into compliance with the law. As long as they believe that arming women works, they will believe that the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate has virtues which outweight its misuses.

The only way to really break this belief is to argue first and foremost that arming women does not work (which has been done several times on this thread)

that’s a question of method: whether it’s ok to lie to someone (i.e. not inform them that what they’re saying contributes to victim-blaming) to not turn them off.

This is not lying: once a person has been convinced that the “arm yourself to be safe” postulate does not hold any intrinsic value, the rest becomes the foregone logical conclusion.

But I was not discussing methods. And judging from this post, neither were you, at fist

Indeed: at first, I was discussing the fact that people with very different opinions can reach seemingly similar conclusions which in fact describe widely different worldviews.

it looks like drawing a distinction on effects based on intent

Since no opinion stated happens in a vaccuum, I daresay that the deep meaning and therefore the value of expressed opinions are dependant of the person expressing them. It can be argued that in this case, the value of “arm yourself to be safe” varies between two level of wrongness, but this is not always the case: the value of an opinion like “Vive le Free Market” will vary from a net positive when expressed by someone who also advocate strong regulations and powerful unions in order to keep the system fair, to a net negative when expressed by a randoid.
And since expressed opinions are often used to justify a lot of things: voting, business practice, family life, social behavior, etc… intent does affect effects.

and by the way, the correct answer to whether rapes have increased or declined after the 1970’s is both.

I’d say this is a claim that rape rate have not significantly declined.

which is not the same as saying they have stayed the same or have increased. Esteleth’s statement doesn’t deny a decrease very strongly (especially not in the context of the post), and does not warrant RR’s claim that people here have “repeatedly and loudly” denied a decrease.

It’s at least as fair as characterizing him as saying rape was rare.

I’m not “characterizing” him. I’m not accusing him of anything, I’m pointing out a fact. “characterizing” would require me to go beyond basic facts, for example saying that he meant it and is now backtracking.

OK, I missed 793 when I was watching for new posts. @RR. Only one person disputed your claim that rape rates are declining. You keep addressing ways people have mischaracterized your arguments (which certainly has happened), but seem to be disregarding other critiques. For instance, that your proposals A. have already been implemented and B. don’t follow your own advice and have nothing to with why rape rates have fallen in the past and at least a tenuous connection to why rape has stuck around and C. you seem to be trying to leverage rape in order to get action on binge drinking, which would seem to be your primary social concern here.

Since no opinion stated happens in a vaccuum, I daresay that the deep meaning and therefore the value of expressed opinions are dependant of the person expressing them.

and the causality of “meaning and value” to effects is…?

the value of an opinion like “Vive le Free Market” will vary from a net positive when expressed by someone who also advocate strong regulations and powerful unions in order to keep the system fair, to a net negative when expressed by a randoid.

well, no. saying “Vive le Free Market” has exactly the same effect either way. But depending on who’s doing the saying, correlated effects will be different because the other behaviors of that person will be different.

And since expressed opinions are often used to justify a lot of things: voting, business practice, family life, social behavior, etc… intent does affect effects.

that’s actually backwards. opinions are formed to justify already existing behavior, so in this instance the opinions are the effect, not the cause. In this instance, they become a “cause” only in the sense that mere presence of the expresed opinions can create positive internal attributes about them in listeners. But they do so regardless of which behaviors the expressed opinions were originally formed to justify, so intent is not relevant to this form of attitude-creation.

Caine @763: The bit about needing training is very true. The CCW classes given are often not enough. I’m not inherently anti-gun, but I would like to see some more training requirements before anyone gets to carry one of those things…

Also, I cannot imagine what you went through, but I do thank you for sharing your experience with us. I think it helps when the MRAs see what they are defending.

Jadehawk. I think you’re being pedantic. He didn’t say rape was rare. At worst, he implied it, though it should be clear from everything else he said that was not the intention. I agree that saying “less common” would have been clearer than “more rare.”

As for why I’m defending him: I grew up in a conservative household always hearing about how it’s unfair that rape shield laws take away men’s right to confront their accuser, how marriage is consent to have sex with your spouse whenever they want, so marital rape laws are interfering in private business and how attempts to protect women from the real problem of sexual harassment have resulted in a situation where and man can have his career ruined by complaints and feminists are just trying to promote their own interests and don’t care if boys do poorly in school or about women without a college education and how when they talked about police not believing rape victims, what they meant was that people accused of rape shouldn’t have due process. (And also about all kinds of other things that aren’t really related to feminism, like how affirmative action is racist, liberals want to take your money and give it to lazy poor people and how welfare destroyed black families.) I was a smart enough kid to be suspicious of demonization and once I went off to college, tried attending feminist events, only to be accused of being a rape apologist for suggesting that women are being taught to be more fearful than is reasonable and the culture of fear was it’s own form of oppression or that people were making unfair generalizations about pro-wrestling. To be fair, representatives of the Men’s Anti-Violence Council were way worse about this than any women I met which now that I’m grown up and learned more, I attribute to misplaced machismo. As a result, I didn’t really involve myself with any feminist groups except the Alliance and my local chapter was pretty much all gay guys. I didn’t really gain any understanding of feminist issues until many years later, partially as the result of dating a stripper and realizing all the bullshit they have to put up with and partially as a result of reading Pharyngula and watching Laci Greene on YouTube.

This is hardly the only example I went years arguing that people who are saying a fetus has a right to life often sincerely believe that and aren’t just using it as cover to punish women for sluttery before I realized there were more to pro-choice arguments than the idea that pro-lifers are anti-woman. Once I heard these arguments, I was mostly convinced. In fact, almost all my current extreme liberal beliefs went through this process.

I think many people are way too quick to make the jump from “you made a bad argument” (meaning one I disagree with) to “you’re a bad person” and that people who hear this get so wrapped up in arguing they aren’t a bad person, the arguments get lost in the noise.

So basically, Daniel, you had a bad experience and you’re projecting it onto RR.

Some people are just saying that RR is a shitty communicator. IIRC, only Tethys was saying that his behavior has some red flags. The more time goes on without RR ever demonstrating that he’s capable of saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that but I understand why you think I did,” the more I’m inclined to agree with her. He’s definitely done a lot of mansplaining. But I’m withholding judgment either way up until now.

I think you need to let go of your concern about alienating potential allies. RR is far too obtuse and arrogant to be an effective ally at this point anyway. And the feminist movement muddled on without you, didn’t it? Not that we’re not glad you’re on board, but frankly I’m tired of constantly being lectured about not alienating assholes who display sexist tendencies. They SHOULD feel alienated. RR SHOULD feel like he’s on the defensive, because he has fucked up a lot here and refused to acknowledge it. All is will with the world. Stop worrying.

I agree that saying “less common” would have been clearer than “more rare.”

go back to the english lesson I typed up earlier. you’re not catching on to where his mistake was, either. it’s not in the “more rare” part, it’s in the “they already are” part. I’m not being pedantic, it’s not my fault too many English speakers hate grammar.

though it should be clear from everything else he said that was not the intention.

yes. I repeatedly said that it’s obvious he has no idea what he said and didn’t mean to say it. the same probably goes for that condescending “let’s” when addressing a group he isn’t part of. my accusation is very specific: he is not very good at communication, and I suspect a hint to why that is lies in this statement:

[this means] exactly what it says. The words are unambiguous and used according to their common definition.

I think many people are way too quick to make the jump from “you made a bad argument” (meaning one I disagree with) to “you’re a bad person” and that people who hear this get so wrapped up in arguing they aren’t a bad person, the arguments get lost in the noise.

er, no. what is happening is that people are saying “your argument has sexist/rape apologetic/etc effects” and they hear “you’re a person who indends to be sexist, a rape apologist, etc.”

This happens all the time. When people say what you are saying is rape apologism, it’s because that’s the effect of the things you say.

You see, the whole point of modern racism and sexism is that it’s primarily perpetrated by “good people”, i.e. people who hold no explicit/general sexist or racist attitudes. but they all hold certain sexist and racist implicit/specific attitudes; because we all do. And the only way to fight them is to bring them to light and confront people with them. I believe someone upthread already linked to one example of that, how even defensive men who insisted they weren’t interrupting women actually started to pay attention and interrupted women less next time; without ever explicitly admitting to wrongdoing before, and possibly even without noticing that their behavior has been changed.

I went off to college, tried attending feminist events, only to be accused of being a rape apologist for suggesting that women are being taught to be more fearful than is reasonable and the culture of fear was it’s own form of oppression or that people were making unfair generalizations about pro-wrestling.

Also, keep in mind: you probably WERE being a rape apologist. The women there were likely 100% correct in pointing that out. You were the one who failed by taking it personally and opting to leave.

He didn’t say rape was rare. At worst, he implied it, though it should be clear from everything else he said that was not the intention. I agree that saying “less common” would have been clearer than “more rare.”

I further note that you are cutting RR far more slack in interpreting his ambiguous statements than you did for Esteleth.

the point was that people who want to be allies need to be confronted with the remaining bigoted attitudes rattling around in their skulls, and they need to be confronted with the effects their words and actions have regardless of their “goodness” or their good intentions. Now, if someone ever finds a method to do so without triggering defensive reactions, I’m all ear. But accommodationism doesn’t seem to work too well, regardless of what’s being accommodated.

No, it doesn’t. I’ve described my rape in detail, more than once, however, that’s been for other survivors. Mine was one of the rare ones, I was nailed by a serial rapist and murderer, there were only three survivors.

The problem lies in that too many people think this type of rapist is typical. They aren’t. Every rape is different and on several levels, they are all the same (in how they affect those who are raped).

Running around with weapons of any type are problematic on many levels. As I said, most people are hesitant to kill. If you have any doubts about killing, a weapon isn’t going to help much.

After my rape, I went to some local gang members I knew and learned how to fight filthy dirty. I learned formal self defense in order to focus even more on keeping a clear, calm head. I do carry a knife, have done since my rape. It is not a monstrous huge thing, not obvious and I don’t carry it in an obvious place. Unlike some other people, I have no doubt about killing. If someone ever tries to rape me again, I will kill, if I have the opportunity. However, opportunity and likelihood of success has to be present. If I realize there’s a better way for me to get out alive, I’ll take it. Surviving is everything. What works to survive in one case won’t work in the next.

Caine: I suppose that reflects more on MRAs mental status than anything. Sometimes I wonder how society can be so ignorant of the suffering of victims, but then again, it’s just another effect of rape culture.

I went off to college, tried attending feminist events, only to be accused of being a rape apologist for suggesting that women are being taught to be more fearful than is reasonable

And you flounced off without stopping to think that perhaps it was damned arrogant of you to assume women are being more fearful than is “reasonable”. Who are you to tell women what is reasonable? At the time, did you look to your own privilege and the relative freedom from risk you enjoy? Did you bother to think why women are taught, from an early age, to be cautious, to obey all these rules, to constantly assess risk? Did you bother to ask the women around you how they assess risk, how much does rape culture impact them, what their particular levels of fear happened to be? Did you listen to them at all? It seems not. It seems you simply talked at them and of course, being a man, you must have been right and they must have been wrong. Stupid, sensitive women, amirite?

that’s actually backwards. opinions are formed to justify already existing behavior, so in this instance the opinions are the effect, not the cause

You’re misunderstanding me: My point is that different intents, different underlying worldviews can cause widely different behaviors but very similar expressed opinions, and that therefore the value of expressed opinions varies depending on said underlying worldview.
An anti-likudnik and an anti-semite, or a a staunch secularist and an islamophobe may occasionally sound alike and seem to be in agreement, but in the end of the day they intents will be extremelly different, and for instance the expressed opinion of the islamophobe will always be less valuable than the staunch secularist’s one, because no matter how similar they may appear to be at first glance, one will be used to justify an ethnicist intent and not the other.

Alcoholics abusive behavior, and acquaintance rape definitely correlate with alcohol use to some degree, but correlation is not causation.

Just as RR is trying to blame alcohol(and media!) for rape, alcoholics blame their abusiveness on alcohol.

A defining characteristic of all abusers is deflecting blame, and trying to manipulate people by casting themselves as victims.

Which is pretty mild. Daniel is probably overreacting because he identifies with RR’s positions. Which is kind of an indictment of RR’s own sexism since, as Caine has ably pointed out, Daniel is still working off of some sexist assumptions.

And yes, these assumptions need to be challenged wherever they are, not just when they’re coming from obvious woman-haters. Even more so when they’re coming from ostensible allies.

because no matter how similar they may appear to be at first glance, one will be used to justify an ethnicist intent and not the other.

How does that matter? All we have to go on is the things that people say, if the only way to distinguish is at the internal state of the people saying things, the difference has no meaning. If they are thinking different things then it should be possible for them to say it using different language, it’s hardly a limited lexicon and grammar that we are talking about. Who wants to inadvertently promote an idea that they don’t support or would actively oppose?
I know that mistakes happen, I have talked about it at some length here today, but when alerted, the responsible thing is to use a different approach and abandon the problematic language.

My point is that different intents, different underlying worldviews can cause widely different behaviors but very similar expressed opinions, and that therefore the value of expressed opinions varies depending on said underlying worldview.

but then it’s still not the expression of the opinion that has different effects. Rather, different behaviors will correlate with this expressed opinion, and even that only in the limited way in which explicit attitude predicts behavior, which really isn’t much. I already explained this.

because no matter how similar they may appear to be at first glance, one will be used to justify an ethnicist intent and not the other.

again, no: the behavior usually comes first, the rhetoric second, at least for the individuals doing the saying (and for the individuals doing the hearing, the intent of the speaker is not relevant to the effect it ill have on them). also “justifying ethnicist intent” is not relevant unless it results in ethnicist behavior; did you mean “justifying ethnicist behavior”?

Also, keep in mind: you probably WERE being a rape apologist. The women there were likely 100% correct in pointing that out. You were the one who failed by taking it personally and opting to leave.

This is just a glorified tone argument.

There’s a difference between being a rape apologist (for instance arguing that marriage is unlimited consent to sex or that getting a woman fall-down drunk is a valid way of obtaining consent or that rape isn’t a big deal or that if a woman leads a man on, she’s asking for it) and being wrong about the social roots of rape. This has actually been my main point.

IIRC (this was twelve years ago), the first argument started because the MAC speaker characterized John Stossel as an attack journalist out to destroy women’s rights and a general right-wing caricature. I defended him because he had been a staunch critic of the drug war and the prison industrial complex and thus did have plenty of cred as a civil rights warrior. This got me pigeonholed as one of those guys. Later, when I asked a question about women’s wrestling in response to something he said about the WWF, he deflected that and talked about the Godfather instead, who was a rather short-lived character. In retrospect, he was right about wrestling and partially right about John Stossel (who, like all libertarians has big blind spots about privilege issues), but he gave me no reason to think so at the time.

I came to the group in the first place because I cared about feminist issues and wanted to know what he could do. I didn’t really have a good picture of what feminist issue were, but I had a good friend/girl I had a crush on in high school who had been arguably the victim of date rape rape at the hands of a college guy she went out with and definitely the target of slut shaming from a bunch of our fellow students. I had also witnessed a youth pastor engaging in it the last time I was forced to go to church camp a few months earlier. When none of the other leadership called him out on it, I realized Christianity was not only bullshit, as I’d been suspecting for a couple years, but really was engaged in the sorts of things non-Christians accused it of despite all the insistence it wasn’t. Despite all the anti-bullying messages they’d been feeding me, they actually endorsed bullying so long as it was aimed at the right people and not just a play for social dominance. Between being pissed off at my classmates and my church for their sexism and myself for not calling them out on it, I was ready to take down the system. As a an 18 year-old hothead who was raised in a gun-loving evangelical Libertarian family, my fuzzy idea of how to do this involved calling out people who thought they were better than alleged sluts on their hypocrisy and inability to mind their own business and possibly organizing vigilante beatings of rapists. My perception was that rape was a real problem, though the one in three figure was probably exaggerated and that the root cause was some rogue motherfuckers who were good at creating plausible deniability and bullying women into not reporting them. I was also concerned that the he-said/she-said nature made it difficult to defend against false accusations as well as making it difficult to prosecute true accusations.

The introductory talk for the men’s feminist group that was meant to recruit new students came off to me as being about how rape is actually due to a culture of machismo and that it was my fault for liking Die Hard and Batman and 20/20 and Jake “The Snake” Roberts when I’d never been past first base with a girl and didn’t associate with rapists. This perception could have to do with the diet of anti-feminist rhetoric I had been raised on, not just what was said, but in retrospect, I still think he did a poor job making his arguments and I could do a much better talk about the same points. (And have, to some degree.)

Which is pretty mild. Daniel is probably overreacting because he identifies with RR’s positions. Which is kind of an indictment of RR’s own sexism since, as Caine has ably pointed out, Daniel is still working off of some sexist assumptions.

Could you be more specific? I’m not defending his positions, just that I think he’s acting in good faith and trying to be helpful and it’s not fair to say he isn’t, though if he continues this pattern of selective replies, I’ll be forced to agree he’s obtuse.

You aren’t being helpful and people keep telling you that. Not too hot on listening, are you?

By you, do you mean a hypothetical you, aka RandomReason? I never said he was good at listening, just that it was unfair to accuse of him of bad faith or indifference. He seems to have gotten so caught up in addressing charges of bad faith or indifference that he hasn’t addressed much else. If he continues like that, I will have to conclude that he is in fact obtuse. (And to be fair, I hadn’t read the previous thread. Keeping up on Pharyngula is like a full-time job. Some commenters may have been making assumptions about him based on what he said there which seemed out of the blue to me.)

There’s a difference between being a rape apologist (for instance arguing that marriage is unlimited consent to sex or that getting a woman fall-down drunk is a valid way of obtaining consent or that rape isn’t a big deal or that if a woman leads a man on, she’s asking for it) and being wrong about the social roots of rape. This has actually been my main point.

well, no. what we are trying to tell you is that sometimes there isn’t a difference, functionally speaking, because those incorrect ideas about the roots of rape have the effect of being apologia for rape.

Once more with feeling: intent isn’t magic, it cannot change the effect of saying/doing something.

I still think he did a poor job making his arguments and I could do a much better talk about the same points.

now we’re maybe getting something: are you saying you HAVE discovered a method for getting across the idea of privilege, patriarchy, and rape culture to men who see themselves as “good guys” but are ignorant of these concepts, without provoking initial defensiveness and reactance?

Because if so, some concrete criticisms and suggestions would be worth a lot more than blanket defenses of RR’s miscommunications.

just that it was unfair to accuse of him of bad faith or indifference.

he’s being accused of an inability to communicate effectively: in terms of saying what he means; in understanding the nuances of what others are saying; in making ineffective or already discussed suggestions; and in trying to tell people what they should be talking about, and then ignoring those people who were talking about what he wants them to talk about.

bad faith and indifference aren’t the point. being wrong and ineffective to the point of starting to look like someone who argues in bad faith is the point.

now we’re maybe getting something: are you saying you HAVE discovered a method for getting across the idea of privilege, patriarchy, and rape culture to men who see themselves as “good guys” but are ignorant of these concepts, without provoking initial defensiveness and reactance?

Comprehensively, no. However, what has generally been effective is more or less what Camels with Hammers laid out a few months ago in his series about how to talk to believers. In particular, don’t assume bad faith, don’t read minds, don’t assign teams and always argue with an argument, not a person. I tried to look it up, but the archives seem borked.

Actually, PZ’s post above in an excellent example of doing it right. That didn’t stop the trolls, but notice RR agreed with PZ and was trying to add items 5 & 6 to a list of what he thought were good ideas. That should have got things off on the right foot, but didn’t.

I would hold up my responses to RR as an example, but seeing as he has only addressed the points where I agreed with him, I wouldn’t have much credibility. Frequently, it works though.

I believe almost none of the social positions I was raised with. (Except that Mormonism is crazy and New Age is a combination of salesmanship and wishful thinking.) I know which arguments convinced me and also what convinced a good number of friends of mine in similar circumstances. (and some people who have written books about it.) More importantly, I know why people who hold my former positions hold them. At least I know why I and people I know held them. One of the main things that contributes to people no listening is describing their views in a way they wouldn’t recognize. You might think it’s a fair summary, but they would think it’s a straw man.

As to rape apologetics: I think this is not in line with how the word “apologetics” is used in other contexts. A Christian apologist argues that Christianity is correct. They don’t argue that Christians are well-intentioned, but wrong or make bad arguments as to what cultural forces enable Christianity to continue its popularity. It also means you are using the same term you’d use for people who really make excuses for rape like Vox Day as people who are well-intentioned but unknowingly contributing to social factors that enable rape, which hardly seems fair.

My perspective growing up was I heard people talking about a pervasive rape culture and it sounded like they were saying the culture in general actively promotes rape when everyone not only thought rape was bad, but got pretty pissed off about it. It sounded like tin-foil hat territory, akin to the Christians who always think they’re about to get thrown to the lions. When I learned that saying there was a rape culture didn’t mean that the culture glorifies rape, but that it subtly enables it, it all suddenly made sense. No one really ever explained that to me until I took some college courses on the subject. Christians, and probably the culture in general, are raised on the idea of good versus evil and that problems are due to bad people. The idea that people can be wrong, as opposed to malicious and that being wrong can cause serious harm is not something pushed in our culture and is one of the main barriers to convincing people to change their minds about most anything.

One other thing that helped me was hanging around MRA sites. (Ones that were recommended by Christina Hoff Summers) They actually aren’t all rape apologists. Prison rape and child custody are areas where they actually have valid points. I took a college course to get me to realize this wasn’t anti-male bias per se, but the flip side of the same stereotypes that give women problems.

You aren’t being helpful and people keep telling you that. Not too hot on listening, are you?

By you, do you mean a hypothetical you, aka RandomReason?

*whoosh*

It also means you are using the same term you’d use for people who really make excuses for rape like Vox Day as people who are well-intentioned but unknowingly contributing to social factors that enable rape, which hardly seems fair.

I’ve been raped and sexually assaulted and harassed, blamed for the harassment and told I somehow brought it all on myself…and I’m supposed to play nice because it’s not fair for other people to get called on how their language and behaviour provides implicit support for rape culture?

Thanks for continuing to presume the burden must always be on women to play nice and try to get along with everyone and always make sure we’re not offending people BECAUSE WOMEN CAN’T DO THAT.

Actually, PZ’s post above in an excellent example of doing it right. That didn’t stop the trolls, but notice RR agreed with PZ and was trying to add items 5 & 6 to a list of what he thought were good ideas. That should have got things off on the right foot, but didn’t.

I would hold up my responses to RR as an example, but seeing as he has only addressed the points where I agreed with him, I wouldn’t have much credibility. Frequently, it works though.

You’ve noticed that the only people he’s responded positively to are men, right? And even then, you at least admit he’s cherry-picking what he responds to…

Isn’t it nice to know that he’s more interested in making sure he gets along with all the other guys than actually listening to the women who endure the brunt of rape culture on a daily basis?

It also means you are using the same term you’d use for people who really make excuses for rape like Vox Day as people who are well-intentioned but unknowingly contributing to social factors that enable rape, which hardly seems fair.

How so? They both ‘really’ act to support a systemic problem that helps rapists rape. Hell, I am sure I do things that make it easier for rapists to rape, and I damn well want to know about it so I can stop.

I’ve been raped and sexually assaulted and harassed, blamed for the harassment and told I somehow brought it all on myself…and I’m supposed to play nice because it’s not fair for other people to get called on how their language and behaviour provides implicit support for rape culture?

Thanks for continuing to presume the burden must always be on women to play nice and try to get along with everyone and always make sure we’re not offending people BECAUSE WOMEN CAN’T DO THAT.

That wasn’t a whoosh. I asked because what you seemed to be saying didn’t make sense. People were disagreeing with me and I was trying to address their points. No one accused me specifically of being unhelpful or not listening or told me to go away. People (and not nearly everyone) said those things to RR, not me.

Where did I say women should play nice? I can see how you might read what I wrote as a promotion of niceness in general, but that wasn’t my intention and I certainly never singled out women. Sometimes, publicly tearing someone a new one is called for for the benefit of spectators, if no one else. There were a couple examples earlier in the thread. What I’m saying is that people deserve the benefit of the doubt. This isn’t about women or this issue in particular, but about countering GIFT and tribalism.

I am forced to conclude that, at best, RR has binge drinking as a pet issue and tries to work it into whatever other issues he comes across, though. He doesn’t seem interested in solutions that don’t involve trying to stop binge drinking. If he posts a substantial response, I can revise this opinion, though.

Almost everyone agrees that rape is horrible. That isn’t the the problem. I think one of the main problems is that rape culture is non-intuitive. You need to know all kids of shit most people, especially men, don’t know in order to understand it. It’s not something that can be explained a 30-second PSA like taking your drunk friend’s keys away.

Though actually, as I was writing this, some low-hanging fruit sprung to mind: pick-up artists. They aren’t necessarily rapists by a strict definition, but they certainly promote a rapey view of sexuality and behavior that’s borderline at best. Also, most guys already hate them because they’re smug assholes. In line with #4, I think it would be relatively easy to get guys behind identifying pick-up artists and disrupting their game if the idea could be properly memed.

How so? They both ‘really’ act to support a systemic problem that helps rapists rape. Hell, I am sure I do things that make it easier for rapists to rape, and I damn well want to know about it so I can stop.

People support predatory lending by putting their money in banks that practice subprime lending, but we don’t call the guy with a saving account a predatory lender. People support anti-gay-marriage initiatives by shopping at Target, but we don’t call them homophobes. People support the Rev Moon by buying sushi from restaurants supplied by his distributor, but we don’t call them Moonies. I think it’s fair to say there’s a big difference between endorsing something and accidentally indirectly giving support. We make this distinct everyone else.

From the gaslighting link: “When I was writing this piece, I was reminded of one of my favorite Gloria Steinem quotes, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”

Sometimes I think that maybe the shared social awkwardness of a lot of us is a good thing. It means that maybe we didn’t receive quite so much of this toxic programming.

Sometimes I think that maybe the shared social awkwardness of a lot of us is a good thing. It means that maybe we didn’t receive quite so much of this toxic programming.

QFT. I got bullied a lot, so never really trusted the motives of others, which is why I never really mainstreamed into whatever the hell it is men are supposed to like. Also, I was hyper aware that some guys are assholes and saw how they played the system to avoid trouble. Also, I apologize for all the typos in my previous post. I think it’s still legible.

Now I just read what RR said in the feminist embarrassment thread about the concept of privilege being po-mo. Even my church-going, Libertarian-voting, feminist hating dad gets this. He seems to have his head up his own ass.

How so? They both ‘really’ act to support a systemic problem that helps rapists rape. Hell, I am sure I do things that make it easier for rapists to rape, and I damn well want to know about it so I can stop.

Had far more contextual assumptions built into it than I could see. My apologies for being unclear.

We here, doing this thing that we are doing, are in general apologists. We create these entries of text filled with justifications for our opinions and actions. When you, Jadehawk,RandomReason,Caine, I, or whoever else makes a case for our positions or defends the words we have already used we are making an apologia for those things we have said. So I am afraid I was working from that assumption (very internalized,) that we were already talking about apologists and apologism when I replied to you and didn’t see that I should make clear what I was speaking about.

So, when anyone, myself included, defends actions, attitudes, and opinions and by doing so they promote rape culture they are acting as a rape apologist whether they actively desire to do so or have done so through misunderstanding. The impact is the same (at least in kind if not always in magnitude,) it provides more cover for rapists. All of us run this risk, all of us can do better, and I don’t think it fair to those who are harmed to try to distance ourselves from the effect of our words by talking about intent, mistakes, or other excuses.

Dhorvath, I see your point and I certainly think it’s necessary to point out to people how their actions contribute to a rape culture. (Though I think the approach should be as non-accusatory as possible.) I just think calling someone who doesn’t buy your explanation of how rape culture works an apologist is inaccurate. There’s a difference between arguing “I don’t think cultural factor X really contributes to rape” and “rape isn’t that bad, all things considered.” The former is former is cultural factor X apologetics and the latter is rape apologetics.

For instance, if I said that using the Internet contributes to rape culture and you said it doesn’t, that wouldn’t make you a rape apologist even if I turned out to be right for some reason that is not readily apparent. I could probably find something your ISP did, or argue rapists use the Internet to find victims and people using it for other things contribute to economies of scale that make this possible. (If you watch local news scare exposes from the late 1990s, this isn’t far off of arguments that people seriously made.) If anyone who contributes to the rape culture, even unknowingly is an apologist, we’re all apologists to some degree and the term is meaningless.

That wasn’t a whoosh. I asked because what you seemed to be saying didn’t make sense. People were disagreeing with me and I was trying to address their points. No one accused me specifically of being unhelpful or not listening or told me to go away. People (and not nearly everyone) said those things to RR, not me.

It apparently was a whoosh if you don’t understand that you’re being unhelpful too. Also, I’m not the one who said that to you…do try to keep names straight.

Where did I say women should play nice?

Gee, idk…every time you tone-troll and tell us to back off of RR instead of actually being honest with him about what he’s doing?

I am forced to conclude that, at best, RR has binge drinking as a pet issue and tries to work it into whatever other issues he comes across, though. He doesn’t seem interested in solutions that don’t involve trying to stop binge drinking.

Yes, and that’s why pretty much every commenter here has called him on what he says because he’s not coming anywhere close to actually addressing the issue of acquaintance-rape.

Almost everyone agrees that rape is horrible.

Isn’t that generous of them? /snark

That isn’t the the problem. I think one of the main problems is that rape culture is non-intuitive. You need to know all kids of shit most people, especially men, don’t know in order to understand it. It’s not something that can be explained a 30-second PSA like taking your drunk friend’s keys away.

How fucking difficult is it for you guys to take the advice given above and ACTUALLY LISTEN TO WOMEN? If you did, you’d have a much better idea of what the problem is and what we go through…but you’re too fucking busy arguing semantics and tone-trolling us to understand why what you’re saying (and what RR is saying) isn’t helpful.

People support predatory lending by putting their money in banks that practice subprime lending, but we don’t call the guy with a saving account a predatory lender. People support anti-gay-marriage initiatives by shopping at Target, but we don’t call them homophobes. People support the Rev Moon by buying sushi from restaurants supplied by his distributor, but we don’t call them Moonies. I think it’s fair to say there’s a big difference between endorsing something and accidentally indirectly giving support. We make this distinct everyone else.

Yes, actually, I do call people homophobes if they support homophobic businesses based on their anti-gay-marriage stance. Because they are homophobes. Why is honesty so disturbing to you?

I’m not going to get started on the other two things you’ve mentioned because that’s a derail, but I wanted to point out that not everyone shares your need to force the victims of a practice to be non-confrontational with people who enforce the system that hurts them.

Now I just read what RR said in the feminist embarrassment thread about the concept of privilege being po-mo. Even my church-going, Libertarian-voting, feminist hating dad gets this. He seems to have his head up his own ass.

Should we be grateful that you’ve condescended to agree with our assessment?

If anyone who contributes to the rape culture, even unknowingly is an apologist, we’re all apologists to some degree and the term is meaningless.

Anyone who defends things that contribute to rape culture is a rape apologist. Just being someone who contributes to rape culture is pretty much an assumption of being part of that culture; since none of us can get out, we are all contributing. Apologist has to mean something in order to have any utility, which is why I am trying to distinguish the defensive nature of apology.

People support predatory lending by putting their money in banks that practice subprime lending, but we don’t call the guy with a saving account a predatory lender. People support anti-gay-marriage initiatives by shopping at Target, but we don’t call them homophobes.

There is a HUGE difference between “supporting” something by choosing one bad company over another in a rigged system and supporting something by not listening and actively talking over the people being hurt. And you are seriously triggering my creepmeter yourself by suggesting otherwise.

Thanks for continuing to presume the burden must always be on women to play nice and try to get along with everyone and always make sure we’re not offending people BECAUSE WOMEN CAN’T DO THAT.

Not only that, but it often doesn’t work until we do. (Possibly because it’s impossible to do that, and so trying to do that indicates weakness and submission?) I’m not sure exactly what is going on (establishing dominance or upsetting established dominance, perhaps?) but most often – in meatspace and in cyberspace – the men who claim to be well-meaning but are actually being obtuse are much more likely to listen when I’m not playing nice. They may turn around and praise the person (male or female) who was acting “more reasonably” than I was, but unless I or some other women is there calling them on their shit without compromise, they continue to ignore what women in general have to say, pretend that the debate is nothing more than a game, and play “gotcha!” instead of being an active listener.

Whether it’s habit, wilfull ignorance, or whatever on their part…sometimes, as a woman, the only thing that has even a small hope of working is to be willing the get in their face and not back down.

This wasn’t addressed to me, but I would like to make a few points as well:

Dhorvath, I see your point and I certainly think it’s necessary to point out to people how their actions contribute to a rape culture. (Though I think the approach should be as non-accusatory as possible.)

People here started off by being honest and blunt with RR. That’s very, very different from being accusatory…and he rejected that honesty and bluntness because he couldn’t handle being wrong.

I just think calling someone who doesn’t buy your explanation of how rape culture works an apologist is inaccurate. There’s a difference between arguing “I don’t think cultural factor X really contributes to rape” and “rape isn’t that bad, all things considered.” The former is former is cultural factor X apologetics and the latter is rape apologetics.

You are now directly contradicting yourself. You said you’d want to know if you were contributing to rape apologism. Your “cultural factor X” argument does factor into rape apolgism. So, how are we supposed to let people know they’re contributing to it if we can’t be honest with them about what they’re doing?

For instance, if I said that using the Internet contributes to rape culture and you said it doesn’t, that wouldn’t make you a rape apologist even if I turned out to be right for some reason that is not readily apparent.

I have no idea why you decided to use this example because it has zero equivalence to the issue at hand…which is that words matter.

If anyone who contributes to the rape culture, even unknowingly is an apologist, we’re all apologists to some degree and the term is meaningless.

That’s false. The term has meaning no matter how many people it applies to, much like “socialist” and “liberal” and “conservative” and “capitalist” will always have meaning regardless of how often or how many times they’re used.

The point is to recognise when you’re doing or saying something harmful and STOP doing it. If multiple comments tell you that you’re saying something that is equivalent to rape apologism, it is YOUR responsibility to evaluate the comments, educate yourself, and address that problem. It is not everyone else’s responsibility to handle your work for you or ignore what you’re doing when you’re saying things that are damaging to the people you claim you’re trying to help.

There is a HUGE difference between “supporting” something by choosing one bad company over another in a rigged system and supporting something by not listening and actively talking over the people being hurt. And you are seriously triggering my creepmeter yourself by suggesting otherwise.

I got a bit tweeked myself. I couldn’t tell if he was equating people with inanimate objects or rejecting the idea that people have a right to care about what happens to them.

Whether it’s habit, wilfull ignorance, or whatever on their part…sometimes, as a woman, the only thing that has even a small hope of working is to be willing the get in their face and not back down.

Exactly. I’m tired of having to yell in order to get men to listen to me, but it beats the alternative of them totally ignore me when I’m being polite/civil.

“I got a bit tweeked myself. I couldn’t tell if he was equating people with inanimate objects or rejecting the idea that people have a right to care about what happens to them.”

For me it was the fact that he was shifting the goalposts so as to absolve people of any responsibility.

Until that point, the discussion had primarily been about expecting RR to not only understand that we live in a rigged system but to also listen to the people it is most rigged against as to how it is rigged.

With that analogy, Daniel was essentially trying to claim that you were expecting anyone that lives in the system to be able to make choices as if the system didn’t exist. Which is an impossible thing to do, and a far cry from expecting RR to listen to women.

The introductory talk for the men’s feminist group that was meant to recruit new students came off to me as being about how rape is actually due to a culture of machismo and that it was my fault for liking Die Hard and Batman and 20/20 and Jake “The Snake” Roberts when I’d never been past first base with a girl and didn’t associate with rapists. This perception could have to do with the diet of anti-feminist rhetoric I had been raised on, not just what was said, but in retrospect, I still think he did a poor job making his arguments and I could do a much better talk about the same points. (And have, to some degree.)

I sincerely doubt that you are accurately representing the message of this talk that you initially found so off-putting.

Even though in the same paragraph, you acknowledge that the fault COULD have been with you and the misogynist propaganda you were fed throughout your childhood, you make sure to bring it back around to feminists not presenting their message in as nice and non-blaming way as possible.

This is what I meant when I said that you are still operating off some sexist ideas. You still think it’s appropriate to expect women and feminists to tailor their message to avoid causing any psychological discomfort to guys who are, in fact, actually sexist, as you were back then and still are, though to a lesser degree now. The thing you’re missing is that women have tried the nicey-nice thing for decades. Centuries, even! And we have noticed that whenever concrete advances are made, it’s because we stopped being nice, took to the streets, and got right up in people’s faces. You, for some reason, are ignoring this, and I do think it’s because you’re still working on the whole listening to women thing. I do appreciate that you are much better at it than RR (who is VERY good at selective listening), but there’s still work to do there.

With that analogy, Daniel was essentially trying to claim that you were expecting anyone that lives in the system to be able to make choices as if the system didn’t exist. Which is an impossible thing to do, and a far cry from expecting RR to listen to women.

I never said he was good at listening, just that it was unfair to accuse of him of bad faith or indifference.

I will accuse him of rape apologetics based on his skewed ideas of cause and effect, and the pompous way he expresses his very wrong opinions. Its very clear to me that he isn’t getting that his own words betray his bias.

RR#434

1) Alcohol plays a major role in rape. Excess consumption of alcohol weakens inhibitions – which, in men, may reduce resistance to aggression and weaken receptivity to social constraints against rape.

Alcohol impairs observation and judgment – which, in women, may reduce normal alertness to danger signs, and, in men, may reduce awareness of even the most obvious social cues and discomfort shown by women to unwanted approaches.

In this quote he assumes that aggression and rape are the normal default position of men. This is utter bullshit. Aggression and violence are learned behaviors. Male aggression is rewarded in our culture, but female aggression is penalized.

He also claims women get raped because they miss the danger signs. NO! Women get raped because men rape them. Society blames the women for drinking, while absolving the man because he was drinking? This IS the harmful double standard that we need to change.

Here is another example of his flawed thinking.

RR replying to Ibis3

“And like drinking’s an excuse. ”reply
Quite the contrary. It does have an effect, leading, from a practical matter, to increased risk of women being raped by men drunk out of their minds. You are imputing a moral argument to what is a practical argument.

See how he is once again assuming that men are inherently drunken rape monkeys who just can’t control themselves?

In no other crime is “I was drunk” seen as a extenuating circumstance.

In no other crime would the fact that the victim had been drinking be used to justify their victimhood.

So RR IS guilty of victim blaming, and perpetuating toxic social memes.

To Random Reason:

I cannot tell if you are being intentionally malicious, or if you are just blind to male privilege. I CAN tell that you have had some bad things happen to you, and that these bad things have been blamed on alcohol.

For you I suggest doing some research on “Adult Children of Alcoholics.” We live in a society that is similar in many ways to the Abuser/Enabler model of addiction.

The important point is that you personally are not to blame for our society which condones the rape double standard. You only earn blame by enabling the double standard.

Alcohol impairs observation and judgment – which, in women, may reduce normal alertness to danger signs, and, in men, may reduce awareness of even the most obvious social cues and discomfort shown by women to unwanted approaches.

Is enabling the rape apologist myth that men rape on accident, by missing the subtle signals of rejection that women are sending.

Research (that was linked to in the OP, HELLO!) shows that rapists do not rape on accident or by misunderstanding. While they may use alcohol to lower their own inhibitions, at the same time, they are deliberately plying their prospective victim with alcohol or other drugs, testing her boundaries, etc. They rape because they want to rape, they plan ahead, and they carry it out. They know when women are sending off social cues of rejection and discomfort, and they choose to ignore it.

RR’s communication style–so many goddamn words!–makes it quite difficult to pick out the substance of what he’s really saying. Also, he runs away whenever he’s challenged.

It’s really hard to believe that he’s arguing in good faith. If he is, then I’d say the burden is on him to change his communication style to demonstrate that he is in fact arguing in good faith.

As I’ve said before: there are misogynists out there. Men who truly, sincerely hate all women. We are asking the non-misogynists to alter their behavior to make it easier for us to tell you–the guy who doesn’t hate women–apart from the genuine misogynists. If this seems like too much work for you, or if it hurts your feelings, or whatever the justification is for not changing your behavior, well, you have lost the right to complain if someone labels you a misogynist. Actually listening to women is one of those important changes in behavior that we are asking you to make. RR hasn’t been able to do that.

He also claims women get raped because they miss the danger signs. NO! Women get raped because men rape them.

Yes. Yes. and also, yes.

It’s also important to point out that, to the extent that women “miss” danger signs, it’s not because of alcohol, but because our cultural training is to play nice and always assume good intentions. Women often notice danger signs, but we are conditioned to doubt ourselves and make unsafe and unhealthy allowances for boundary pushing behavior.

Which is why you are actually much more likely to get a lot of uncompromising push-back against telling women to “be nice” or not assume intent when the topic is rape and the venue is a place like, well, here. Because the fact is that expecting women to give men the benefit of the doubt is often a dangerous thing to do, and arguing that we should “be fair” is often contributing to that conditioning.

Furthermore, RR is actually arguing a very specific and dangerous myth – that serial rapists get drunk to lower their inhibitions rather than to play along with cultural expectations. It is true that a significant number of the rapists described in the OP have chosen to drink on purpose. However, they are also very deliberate in how much they drink and how they use being publicly seen drinking as a way to pressure women to do the same.

By falsely claiming that drink is a cause of rape rather than a tool of rapists, RR isn’t just giving rapists cover after the fact he’s also making invisible one of those danger signs. He is actively putting women in danger by trying to convince women (and men) that the guy who looks sloppy drunk and keeps pushing drinks onto women isn’t ever being deliberate or misleading. By claiming it’s the alcohol and not a choice, he’s forcing women to choose between never drinking in public vs being reasonably safe (as opposed to giving women the tools to drink in public with care). That kind of stark, false, no-win choice tends to push women – especially younger ones – into making unsafe or unhealthy decisions.

Exactly, Jenny.
RR flips cause and effect. The point of the (true statement) many serial rapists use alcohol as a tool is not that the rapists rape because the alcohol blurs their judgement but that the rapists ply their victims with alcohol in order to rape them more effectively.

Incidentally, I never want to use the phrase “rape more effectively” again. *feels dirty*

You are now directly contradicting yourself. You said you’d want to know if you were contributing to rape apologism. Your “cultural factor X” argument does factor into rape apolgism. So, how are we supposed to let people know they’re contributing to it if we can’t be honest with them about what they’re doing?

How is that contradictory? I’m not saying you shouldn’t inform people when they support rape culture. I’m just saying that calling them a rape apologist isn’t a good way to do this. A rape enabler, sure, but not an apologist.

I got a bit tweeked myself. I couldn’t tell if he was equating people with inanimate objects or rejecting the idea that people have a right to care about what happens to them.

What inanimate objects? All of my example were about the things we do affect people in ways we don’t intend and aren’t aware of unless we research the subject.

Gee, idk…every time you tone-troll and tell us to back off of RR instead of actually being honest with him about what he’s doing?

Who’s “us,” though? It’s not just women.

This is what I meant when I said that you are still operating off some sexist ideas. You still think it’s appropriate to expect women and feminists to tailor their message to avoid causing any psychological discomfort to guys who are, in fact, actually sexist, as you were back then and still are, though to a lesser degree now. The thing you’re missing is that women have tried the nicey-nice thing for decades. Centuries, even! And we have noticed that whenever concrete advances are made, it’s because we stopped being nice, took to the streets, and got right up in people’s faces. You, for some reason, are ignoring this, and I do think it’s because you’re still working on the whole listening to women thing. I do appreciate that you are much better at it than RR (who is VERY good at selective listening), but there’s still work to do there.

I don’t think you should read to much into my current views based on something that happened when I was 18. I do still think he was making broad generalizations and assuming that incoming freshmen were familiar with feminist theory. That’s the danger of having a student volunteer run these things. You have a point, though I think both approaches have worked. In fact, they reinforce each other like an uncoordinated version of good-cop/bad-cop. The dramatic approach is just more memorable and visible.

I was thinking of politics and how it’s become so polarized it’s quite easy to only listen to people who agree with you and let them explain the positions of people who disagree with you. Churches are similarly insular. On reflection though, this is more the fault of cable news and publishing industries than a failure of a particular rhetorical approach. My own insulation from good arguments growing up was more the influence of my parents and the fact the Internet wasn’t very mature yet then. Hell, if it weren’t for the Internet, I’d probably still be voting Libertarian and paying lip service to church while not attending.

See how he is once again assuming that men are inherently drunken rape monkeys who just can’t control themselves?

In no other crime is “I was drunk” seen as a extenuating circumstance.

(Note that I’m presuming good faith here. It’s possible he’s a very subtle troll, in which case, well played, but it’s worth addressing because plenty of people do make this argument in good faith.)

I think you are reading something into that quote that isn’t there. He isn’t talking about who’s responsible for rape, but how to stop it. Drunk people are more likely to commit all kinds of crimes. For instance, in Iowa City a couple years ago, there was a huge problem with drunken underclassmen starting fistfights in the pedestrian mall near campus. The city dealt with this by placing restrictions on the local bars. No one took this to mean that the assailants shouldn’t go to jail. He’s not saying that drunk men are more likely to commit rape, therefore the alcohol, not the man is to blame: He’s arguing drunken men are more likely to commit rape so a good way to prevent rape is to keep men from getting drunk. This has its own problems as it’s easier said then done (it’s been attempted in various ways for the last century), causes other issues and may have some effect, but misses the root issue. (People had similar complaints about Iowa City’s 21-over policy.)

This does bring up another issue, though. We all agree there’s a rape culture. (We, meaning everyone still participating in the thread, not everyone.) There are certain factors we all think contribute, particularly double standards, the taboo nature of sex and the idea men and women can’t have meaningful communication. There are plenty of other factors we aren’t going to agree on, though, like porn. Both sides have arguments as to how the other is enabling rape culture. How far would we take good faith assumptions in a discussion like that?

He isn’t talking about who’s responsible for rape, but how to stop it.

Right, but his proposals for stopping it are going to be ineffective, because he has misidentified the causes of rape, because he’s still subscribing to rape culture narratives about who rapes, and why, and how.

Okay, so we have a fact, that roughly half of rapists are drunk at the time. Unless your typical rapist is drunk half the time, which I think we can safely assume isn’t true, this means men are considerably more likely to commit rape when drunk.

We have two proposed explanations for this fat:

1. Men with rapist tendencies are more likely to act on those tendencies when drunk.
2. Men planning to commit rape get drunk as part of their plan to get the victim drunk or create plausible deniability or purposely lower their inhibitions so they can follow through with it.

Is there any reason these can’t both be true? Drunkenness does have a high correlation with other violent crimes,and not all of them are planned. This is why we have bar fights.

Says about 75% of sexual assaults are planned, so 25% are unplanned. I couldn’t find any information as to whether organized and disorganized offenders drink at similar rates, so I can’t draw hard conclusions, but even if all of the unplanned offenders were getting drunk and wouldn’t commit rape were they sober, you’re only talking about 25% of cases. Realistically, you’re probably talking about significantly less than 10% even if you could take rapist’s alcohol away, which you can’t.

If the repeat predators commit 95% of the rapes, then only 5% are committed by men who aren’t predators (some of which may well be predators who haven’t had a second victim yet, in that study). That means only 5% of rapes AT MOST fall into your hypothetical percentage of rapes committed by men who wouldn’t rape if they were sober.

I hope that clears up why this line of argument is not very helpful, however well-intentioned you meant it to be.

I hope that clears up why this line of argument is not very helpful, however well-intentioned you meant it to be.

I don’t see why. That supports what I was saying: the scenario RR laid out does happen, but is a factor in a relatively small percentage of rapes, so he’s not going to see the 80% decrease he was hoping for even if we could stop people from drinking, which we can’t. We do need to consider the possibility that study is skewed as rapists will to admit to their behavior may not be a representative sample of rapists in general, but something seems out of line with the other studies I’ve seen.

We do need to consider the possibility that study is skewed as rapists will to admit to their behavior may not be a representative sample of rapists in general, but something seems out of line with the other studies I’ve seen.

Uh… if that’s what you think, you really, really should read the source article and its follow-ups. That was rapists willing to self-report as long as the word “rape” was not used. And THOSE rapists made up nearly 10% of the population of men in general.

My point specifically regarding your comment @67 mark ii, is that dissecting alcohol use as you’re doing, isn’t helpful even though you’re doing it theoretically. Personally I think it’s trivial at best and disturbing at worst, given the mythology of rape culture.

Daniel, none of this would even be an issue if you, and RR too, would just shut the fuck up for a second and listen to the people who are knowledgeable about the issue, instead of fucking mansplaining all the time. You aren’t paying attention, RR isn’t paying attention, and THAT IS THE PROBLEM. If you WERE paying attention, YOU WOULDN’T BE AS WRONG AS YOU ARE NOW.

He fooled me for a while, and opposable thumbs, at the least. Trolling like that takes talent. Compare him to the other trolls on this thread and the creationists we get and you’ll see he did a better than usual job of provoking people while pretending he didn’t do it on purpose and keeping up the appearance of dealing with objections. It’s one of the more skillful uses of the “why u mad?” gambit I’ve seen.

Uh… if that’s what you think, you really, really should read the source article and its follow-ups. That was rapists willing to self-report as long as the word “rape” was not used. And THOSE rapists made up nearly 10% of the population of men in general.

I did. They were 6% of men. That doesn’t mean there aren’t another few percent that still won’t admit it. Absent some way to positively identify rapists, this is all we have, though. I wasn’t saying it was a bad study, just answering a potential objection by pointing out a caveat before I drew a conclusion.

I was agreeing with you. RR had a few facts about acquaintance rape and alcohol, then added several invisible assumptions on top of that. Namely, that assaults were unplanned and that they would not have happened in the absence of alcohol. My point in providing the link was to back up a previous poster’s assertion that most rapes are planned. Your later link made a far better case for this than the one I found, which I thank you for.

He had previously argued that addressing contributory factors doesn’t mean shifting blame. Several other posters had done a good job arguing that while this may be true in theory, people are going to take it this way. I agree with this, but had nothing to add. I had said earlier that binge drinking seems to be a symptom of some of the same things that cause the culture, but is not itself a major cause of the rape culture as RR had argued way back.

He also has a history of arguing from crime statistics. I anticipated the obvious objection, from his point of view, or the point of view of someone else who was making similar arguments in good faith, was that lots of rapes may be planned in advance, but there are still a significant number that weren’t which would have not happened in the absence of alcohol. This seems superficial plausible as drunk people are more likely to commit violent crime in general. (One point I deleted, because I possibly wrongly thought it unnecessary, was that a significant percentage of people who commit other crimes while drunk likely planned them before drinking as well.) I was dissecting his argument to show that even under the most generous set of assumptions (that we could stop all instances where rapists drinking and that it would stop them from raping in all cases), his plan wouldn’t stop all that many rapes and under realistic assumptions, it would hardly stop any. So while saying his theoretical scenario doesn’t happen may be overselling it, it almost doesn’t happen, which isn’t any better in practice. How am I supposed to poke holes in his argument without dissecting it?

My approach to argumentation is general is to ask myself that if I had been assigned my opponent’s position in debate class, what are the best arguments I could use for the position, and why are they wrong? I’m sorry if that was unclear. Perhaps I should have been more explicit about this. I’ve actually learned a lot in this thread. I knew that predators committed the vast majority of rapes, but had no idea how vast. Does anyone have links to studies on what makes these men different from other men? The one linked did mention these men are more likely to use violence in general, answering an earlier question, so is it just general sociopathy? I’m curious as to whether it’s possible to convince a significant number of rapists that their behavior is rape and is wrong or they’re a lost cause and we need to focus solely on effective ways to catch them and reduce their effectiveness. Also, can anyone point to studies about male-on-male rape. I suspect those rapists are operating from largely the same mindset and that there’s significant overlap between the groups, but want solid evidence rather than speculation

There’s also the strategy of eliminating the social conditions that make people form rapist ideologies in the first place. Similar things seem the most likely explanation for why violent crime in general has dropped. I’m not ignoring this factor. Just wondering if outreach programs, like are done with former gang members, make any sense for this issue. I lean toward no, because rapist’s motives are almost much always predators, where most kinds of criminals may be predators or just desperate and/or angry, but the liberal in me wants to fix people instead of punishing them.

@Daniel, you may notice the post I linked (which is the one in the OP too, hey!) references research from 2002 and 2009, while Lisak himself says the field needs further research. If you care, you might start by donating and agitating for more study and debunking of rape myths, including listening to women and respecting what they have to say on the matter.

And while you’re doing that, note that the 6% figure you cite is from ONE self-reporting study. The other study referenced found 13%, which is why I usually say “about 10%”. How much more good-faith do I need to lose, hmm?

All of my example were about the things we do [that] affect people in ways we don’t intend and aren’t aware of unless we research the subject.

RR does not need to do any research on rape myths and how they make people less safe (although he should) – people were spoon-feeding him that information, and he still wasn’t listening.

And clearly neither are you.1

In fact, they reinforce each other like an uncoordinated version of good-cop/bad-cop.

Gee, really, what a novel idea!

They may turn around and praise the person (male or female) who was acting “more reasonably” than I was, but unless I or some other women is there calling them on their shit without compromise, they continue to ignore what women in general have to say…

Or, you know, NOT so novel after all. But please do keep on repeating women’s ideas without giving them credit. It goes such a long way towards showing us you are listening. /sarcasm

btw, in case you hadn’t noticed, we are the bad cops.** So why do you keep asking us to give anyone the benefit of the doubt? Are you unclear on how the dynamic works? Or do you not want it to work for some reason?

** and by “bad cops” I mean “people who act well within reason and fairness but occasionally are blunter than we might be otherwise so as to shift expectations and get shit done”

This is a great discussion. I just wanted to say that I am an English instructor for university first-years and all our reading this semester has been about rape culture, culminating in a research project in which students will suggest a change to our university’s sexual assault prevention campaign. I am really *really* hoping some of them suggest targeting men with anti-rape messages.

Anyway, have found this and the other threads very educational, both in personal terms and in terms of papers, articles and other media that I can share with the class.

I did read the linked articles, though I admit I may have skimmed them looking for points to use against RR, which in retrospect, wasn’t a good idea and perhaps shows that I was overly concerned with scoring debate points and demonstrating the tactic I was advocating. I learned some things and was left with more questions. Some I was able to answer with Google-fu, like comparisons. Others I wasn’t. My search implied reforming rapists isn’t possible, or is only possible for a vanishingly small number, but I was hoping there is some ray of hope here.

As to accusations of mansplaining, the topic isn’t just how the rape culture is perpetuated, but how to effectively target men to get them to help in anti-rape campaigns. I think men actually do have special insights on this topic, which is why the contributions of people like Thomas and PZ are invaluable. I certainly disagreed with some people, but I don’t think I disregarded anyone’s opinion, man or woman, except some MRA trolls who weren’t seriously putting forth a position and thus don’t count.

For instance, I was originally arguing that there are a good number of people out there (who I think it is fair to call rape apologists) who will claim that feminists say that marriage is institutionalize rape and other, similar claims. This is, of course, ignoring that Wollstonecraft said that more than 200 years ago in a rather different social context and that this is very much a minority view. My objections was that using terms like “rape culture” and “rape apologist” superficially sound like this view and the explanation of what they actually mean is rather complicated and good luck getting people to listen to the whole thing, so using these tactics plays right into the hand of the people erecting straw feminists. Jenny @ 854 and a couple other people argued that not using such terms also plays into their hands, and far more so, and I must admit they are correct.

Gee, really, what a novel idea!

I’m not saying it’s novel. I actually got it from things I heard here in the accommodationist debates. I’m just saying that it isn’t incorrect to saying getting in people’s faces is the only thing that works. If you were to phrase it that getting in people faces is an important part of any effective strategy, I’d agree with you or at least admit I have no solid counter examples. Also, there’s more than one way to get up in people’s faces. I was only objecting to the term rape apologist, not the ideas behind it (I suggest rape enabler), though I can see as how that would come across as concern trolling. This wasn’t my intention and I apologize. I still think it’s not an ideal term, but I have been convinced this is beside the point.

btw, in case you hadn’t noticed, we are the bad cops.** So why do you keep asking us to give anyone the benefit of the doubt? Are you unclear on how the dynamic works? Or do you not want it to work for some reason?

Well yes, but arguing with the bad cops is part of the good cop routine. I will admit this is a bit post-hoc, but I think valid.

One more point that may be useful to the OP: Where in society are people explicitly told to assume a yes and that no still means yes (and implicitly, that people are means to an end) and rewarded for behaving as if this were true? Sales. I admit this is not in itself a novel point as anti-capitalists have been making similar arguments for years, but it hasn’t been brought up in this thread. Anecdotally, from people I know to be rapists, I think there’s a connection.

If you care, you might start by donating and agitating for more study and debunking of rape myths, including listening to women and respecting what they have to say on the matter.

Listening to women (and actual victims, not just Ann Coulter and the like) is how I initially got interested in this topic in the first place. I’ve been calling out slut-shamers for years. I got on this topic because I was interested in how to do this more effectively and saw some people participating in what I thought were unhelpful tactics, and I want anti-rape methods to be effective. On reflection, people (or at least most of them) were thinking bad faith or RR’s part not because he made some arguments that superficially resembled common bad faith arguments and they leaped to conclusions, but because they had evidence of bad faith that I did not (and likely have more experience dealing with this particular kind of troll, so are better attuned to the signs).

Between me taking all look at this other evidence and the further evidence in this thread, I must conclude RR really is arguing in bad faith. Ironically, this means I leaped to a conclusion and am crushed by my own argument, so my face is rather red now and I’m annoyed with RandomReason, who could have conceded some points and/or reformulated arguments to answer objections and demonstrated good faith, but decided he’d rather not do anything constructive and made me look bad in the process, Since RR doesn’t seem to be listening any more, to the degree he was in the first place, I don’t see any point in continuing to argue how one could theoretically make the arguments he made in good faith, but would love to stick around for further discussion.

And one more point: I think several posters here made unwarranted assumptions of bad faith on my part. At first glance, this would seem to support my earlier contention that people here are too quick to conclude bad faith, but my reaction wasn’t tp say “you wimmins are mean, I’m going back to Dispatches where I’m a ganger and not a gangee,” but to feel challenged to write something that woudl prove I was acting in good faith, so there goes my whole argument, or at least most of it. SallyStrange, if you did this on purpose to demonstrate your point, well done.

Just one more quick thing about the “arm yourselves”
We know that arming oneself doesn’t prevent violent crime
We know that the death penalty doesn’t prevent violent crime
Why on earth should arming women so they could kill a rapist prevent rape?
Apart, of course, from the fact that it doesn’t work when you’re attacked from behind, made drunk, slipped a drug, fooling around in private already and changing your mind, being asleep…
Yeah, I admit, I could probably have stopped the guy who followed me into the car park and tried to get me, because I knew he was following me, I knew what he was up to, I had time. But that’s the fucking exception.
What prevents crime? Changes in society. We had drunk driving. 25 years ago that was a petty crime. It wasn’t bad, you’d get sympathy for being caught. Nowadays outside of certain toxically masculine groups, nobody dares to admit to it even when nothing happened.

BTW, something I found helpful in those “dark street alone” situations is making fake calls on my cellphone.
You know, talking to somebody that you’re on your way home, you’re just walking past the bank, yes, you should be home in 10 minutes.
Maybe it only helps in calming me down, but I always hope that the “presence” of a witness who cares about me would scare predators off.
That is, of course, also a meassure that is only intended to keep myself safe and doesn’t change rape-culture.

Just one more quick thing about the “arm yourselves” We know that arming oneself doesn’t prevent violent crime We know that the death penalty doesn’t prevent violent crime Why on earth should arming women so they could kill a rapist prevent rape?

That’s the whole point: there are still people out there -a lot of people- who believe that arming people and/or executing violent criminals works, or would work if it was done more systematically.
*
The problem is, assuming that such individuals are in agreement with violent criminals or accusing them from the get-go of being the de-facto accomplices of violent criminals -as it has been argued on this thread- are disastrous ways of handling the problem.

An armed populace does help lots of people: gun manufacturers, gun store owners and gun permit certification class teachers, for instance. I can see why someone might think it would reduce crime and might find these arguments convincing if I were to just go off theory and only listen to data if I liked what it had to say. On the other hand, we do have plenty of data showing that any deterrent effect is outweighed by the other problems an armed populace cause, mainly that an ordinary citizen isn’t going to be a good judge of when to use a gun (or pepper spray. I’ve seen several instances of overly sensitive drunk people misusing their pepper spray because they don’t like someone’s attitude.) and having all these guns around makes it easier for criminals to get them. This appeals to people who want to feel safe and don’t think much about whether they actually are. Or people who are more interested in punishing rapists than stopping rape. You can see why this idea caught on in the US.

accusing them from the get-go of being the de-facto accomplices of violent criminals -as it has been argued on this thread- are disastrous ways of handling the problem.

1) They are being de facto accomplices of violent criminals. Saying so isn’t accusing them of shit, it’s informing them of the consequences of their actions.

2) No one here has suggested that anyone go around accusing anyone of anything “from the get-go” irrespective of anything else they say or do.

3) Your concern trolling has been noted.

4) Shockingly enough, sometimes we are more concerned about people other than those that are eager to be de facto accomplices of violent criminals. Sometimes we are quick to point out these less than savory consequences not for the purpose of helping the rape apologists be good little boys, but to remind any lurkers – especially female ones – that this shit is not ok and does not need to be tolerated.

*********

A friend and I were swapping travel stories yesterday, both good and bad, and one of mine that definitely fell in the “bad” category was of being groped in public for the first time.

I bring this up mainly to point out that when it first started happening, when I first felt something insistently brush against my breast, I did not assume the worst and simply shifted position so as to accommodate whichever fellow subway rider was rude enough to violate my space.

Even when the sensation came back, and more strongly this time, I had a moment where I assumed I simply hadn’t shifted my position well enough. Within miliseconds it was really hard to assume anything other than a deliberate groping, however. At which point I had a terrifying moment of looking into my groper’s eyes as he hovered above me, as we were pressed together in the crush of people on the subway, and he continued to play with my body as if he had a right to do so.

So I pushed.

Which did nothing.

So I pushed again, harder, even more angry and desperate than I was before – and he finally got the message that I was going to keep fighting back and he turned away. But not before everyone else around us was jostled and turned their annoyed, frowning faces to glare at me.

This is how this shit happens. This is how “giving people the benefit of the doubt” makes women more vulnerable. This is how giving a shit about what the people around you are going to think keeps women from speaking up and defending themselves. It’s not possible to properly address this shit without other people getting inconvenienced. And it’s fucking absurd and dangerous and yes, victim-blaming, to argue that not jostling people – or being overly concerned with rape apologists feelings – is something that is both useful to do and worthy of any amount of effort.

That’s the whole point: there are still people out there -a lot of people- who believe that arming people and/or executing violent criminals works, or would work if it was done more systematically.

Yes, and lots of people think that dressing women in bedsheets prevents rape. That’s bullshit, too, not supported by any data or evidence, but by a dogmatic ideology. It also puts the onus onto the women to do the right thing.
Can you see the similarities?

The problem is, assuming that such individuals are in agreement with violent criminals or accusing them from the get-go of being the de-facto accomplices of violent criminals -as it has been argued on this thread- are disastrous ways of handling the problem.

Oh, you think that whenever somebody comes along to spew such utter, unsupported bullshit (and, if you haven’t noticed, GBD has a history. He’s an infallible Über-Marxist wh thinks that feminism is a toy for women who aren’t enlightened enough to be a Marxist like him. He also thinks that it’s totally OK to objectify women, because according to his definition that’s not bad), we should be kind and nice and explain patiently instead of calling out their bullshit?
If somebody came along, honestly and well-meaning, telling us that women should dress modestly (keep sober, carry a gun…) we should cut them some slack?
I am generally OK with playing “Erklärbär”*, but no, not even I would do that.

*Erklärbär is a German term for somebody who explains things nicely and a bit simple, just like an actor dressed as a bear on a children’s TV show.

At which point I had a terrifying moment of looking into my groper’s eyes as he hovered above me, as we were pressed together in the crush of people on the subway, and he continued to play with my body as if he had a right to do so.

Oh Christ, I’m sorry this happened to you. It’s an incredibly horrible feeling, realizing you’re being assaulted in the middle of a crowd. Women are not taught to be assertive and certainly not assertive enough to deal with this sort of shit. I know it’s a shock when this happens, but if it ever happens again, along with the pushing, say very loudly (yell if necessary) get your hand off my breast right now! (or whatever body bit is being assaulted.) This not only lets the people around you know what’s going on, but can gain you an ally or two. It also emphasises public shaming on the part of the groper.

say very loudly (yell if necessary) get your hand off my breast right now!

heh, well, it was in Paris, I didn’t speak any French, and my experiences trying to simply buy crepes in English from a street vendor did not really encourage me to think that anyone would listen to anything I had to say in English. :p

But, yeah, if I had been in NY or London, I think I probably would have instinctively said at least “Get! Away!”

Which was part of why I was making the point that worrying about what others will say makes women less safe. It probably would have helped to at least say “get away!” and I did start to say something –

But like at the start, I hesitated because of what experience had taught me how people would react. It was just extra complicated to try to explain the layers of that in my original already-very-long comment, because in this case it had as much to do with attitudes about tourists as it did attitudes about women.

Ah shit. So now traveling women need a whole new list of handy dandy phrases? Oy.

ha! I would be delighted if such Densities would be helpful enough to suggest that women planning on traveling learn these helpful list of phrases that they themselves have been nice enough to look up. :p

Sadly, the typical advice instead tends to translate to:

Don’t Travel

Don’t Travel Alone

Don’t Travel to These Places

Don’t Travel Alone to These Places

Don’t Enjoy These Touristy Activities

Don’t Enjoy These Touristy Activities While Alone

etc.

And the part that all this advice ignores (deliberately? possibly. I don’t really care) is that, if someone would come to me now and tell me that I have the chance to not have had that experience – but the price of that would be to also have not experienced everything else I did on that same trip – from seeing Monet’s Waterlillies to gobbling french baguettes from a real! Parisian! bakery! to wandering through the gardens of Versailles – I wouldn’t even have to think about my decision. “No way in hell!” with lots of mocking laughter would be my response.

Which would be why I continue traveling – by myself even! – and otherwise ignore such “helpful” advice, despite some bad experiences.

I am not fluent in any language but english. However, it seems to me that “STOP!! Don’t MOLEST me you PERVERT! would be understood in most European languages.

Statistically, yes, I think this is very true. And it’s not like all Parisians were as bad as the Very Memorable Street Vendor. Many were quite nice and very tolerant of my lack of French, especially considering Paris/France’s reputation.

It’s more that…this is why it’s so very important to NOT teach women they won’t be heard or believed.

And also (this is directed at the Densities and any well-meaning but ignorant lurkers, not you), typically, when people give suggestions like you are Caine are doing, it tends to be given in a very different tone.

Unlike you and Caine, who are being sympathetic and helpful but not pushy, it’s often very…”oh, well, do this and of course it will work.” Which ignores not just that they are essentially expecting women to go against their training, as I stated above, but also that there are times when it doesn’t work. There are times when you are ignored, when you are blamed for defending yourself, etc. And, unfortunately, that’s part of women’s decision making process by necessity as well – knowing that it could backfire, knowing how badly it could backfire, and weighing the risks of both silence and not staying silent.

Well, STOP! and Pervert! should work in most countries.
On the other hand:
You’ll never get to see those people again. Why care about what other idiots on the subway think about you? Get the creep to stop, no matter if the rest thinks you to be impolite.
Our “good education” is hitting us again and again, isn’t it?
And it’s rape-culture playing into their hands:
Good, normal guys don’t do such things. Therefore it’s your fault, or you’re hysterical.

Looking back at that time the guy followed me into the car park, everything in that situation played into his hands.
I only noticed that he was following me bacause he had catcalled in the street while passing me, walking in the opposite direction.
Could I have called out “Hey, what stupid asshole are you?”
No, because although not that polite, it is OK, to catcall women. It is not OK to call him an asshole for that (imagine, he might just be a good guy who thinks that women are flattered. It’s unhelpfull to call their bullshit).
So I noticed him when I walked up the street towards the car park, I noticed that he gained on me.
Could I have confronted him there?
Oh, dear, I’d have been a hysterical bitch, I mean, those misandrist feminists thinking that every man is a rapist.
So, I entered the car park. Yep, a dark one, non-supervised, in one of the not so nice parts of the town, and he became faster and faster.
I kept my head.
Fuck it was like a BBC documentary “African Wildlife”. You know, when the predator and the gazelles are watching each other, waiting for the first one to make a move.
He wanted to get me as far away from the entrance as possible, so I acted as if I was headong for a different car, further at the back, so when i made the final dash for mine, he didn’t have time enough to reach me.
So, could I have done something then? What could I have said, what would the police have done? “Nothing” (you know, zero bad) had happened, why was I accusing an innocent man of attempted assault, he had never touched me!
Oh, and you’re allowed to guess the reaction of the few people I told this.
They were shocked, they were genuinly worried about me, they told me sternly that I had been stupid and must never ever park there again!

In my bar managing days, we made a point to keep an eye out for guys who came across as predators: specifically, guys who overheard and intervened with a staff member’s offer to call a taxi for the inebriated lady and who were insistent about it. I would appoint another bartender to get the bouncer while I kept an eye on the woman in question, and we would make certain she got in the taxi, in possession of all her belongings: purse, coat, anything else that might contain an ID or address. There were more than a few occasions when the “helpful” guy went beyond petulant (“geez, I was just trying to help”) and became far more belligerent. Anybody who became problematic was banned. If a taxi wasn’t readily available at closing time, one of the staff would drive the lady home. This was at a typical rowdy college bar featuring pool tables and punk bands, but word on the street was that our place was the safest place for women in our university community. I still feel good about that, decades later.

Fast-forward to a neighborhood sports bar, many years after my bartending days. I was about 40 at the time. My husband was working that night, so I went to the neighborhood pub and joined a few friends for a beer. It was the world series, the game was weak, and my friends trickled home before I did. I’d had had one beer, and the bar was crowded. I thought I’d have a second beer and sit the game out.

A guy who had been lightly hitting on me (and who had been rebuffed) was sitting between me and the bar. I ordered a beer from the bartender, got up to go to the bathroom and when I came back, the beer was at my seat. I thought the bartender had put it there, and took a few sips. In a very short time I felt fuzzy-headed. Some inner voice screamed, “That’s not the beer doing that — GO HOME NOW!!!” I tried to get the bartender’s attention but she was far to busy. So I announced a bogus need to use the ladies room, got up, and instead of exiting through the front door, I went out through the fire exit in the bathroom hall so as not to be seen and lurched my way home, feeling weaker by the moment. I called my husband and he met me at home. He called our family doctor, and the doctor said it sounded like someone dropped me one of the date-rape drugs, that I should expect certain symptoms, monitor my BP, and that I should go to the ER if I passed out or felt like I was going to, or if my BP dropped, otherwise, it would pass. Fortunately I was at least still awake enough to take my BP, tell him the condition of my pupils, etc. Good thing I am a First Responder.

I forced myself to stay on my feet and drink copious amounts of water to flush my system, and then I slept for about ten hours. I didn’t remember much when I woke up the next morning.

I went back to the neighborhood bar the next day and related the story and advised them to adopt our tavern’s policies. They did.

Just one more quick thing about the “arm yourselves”
We know that arming oneself doesn’t prevent violent crime
We know that the death penalty doesn’t prevent violent crime
Why on earth should arming women so they could kill a rapist prevent rape?

Carrying a weapon without adequate training both technically in how to use it properly, and psychologically in being prepared to kill with it just means conveniently providing your attacker with a weapon he can take away from you and use against you.

Which would be why I continue traveling – by myself even! – and otherwise ignore such “helpful” advice, despite some bad experiences.

This.

When I was 20, and in college, I spent a summer living in Boston (which is not where I’m from).

In addition to experiencing this new city, I decided to do some traveling. For some reason, the thought of me traveling by myself freaked my dad out.

At one point, I was talking to my parents on the phone and told them that I had booked a trip to Martha’s Vineyard. This involved taking a bus from Boston to some town in Cape Cod and a ferry from there to the Vineyard. My dad FREAKED OUT. I don’t remember much of what he said, but I do know he said “what are people going to think of a single woman traveling alone?”

It pissed me off so much because, what the hell else was I going to do? I had roommates, but they either weren’t interested or I wasn’t that close to them, so who was I going to travel with? Plus, I doubt he would have said the same thing to my brother…

But, really, the travel advice for single women puts so many restrictions on us that we might as well just never leave our home towns…

But, really, the travel advice for single women puts so many restrictions on us that we might as well just never leave our home towns…

Which is part of their main goal of getting us confined back to the home. That’s not possible since most household need at least 2 incomes to survive anymore. And its all the women’s fault since we dared leave the house in the first place..

So they aim for small steps like not leaving the hometown/city or going out at night alone.